Touch of a Hand
by RunawayTelephones
Summary: The Pandorica exploded. Everything would be okay. But then there was a cylindrical container with the hand of a Time Lord inside. AU because Donna never touched the severed hand in Journey's End.
1. Prologue

_**Touch of a Hand**__**- The Pandorica exploded. Everything would be okay. But then there was a cylindrical container with the hand of a Time Lord inside. AU because Donna never touched the severed hand in Journey's End.**_

The Pandorica exploded with the TARDIS brilliantly, and the Doctor thought it was quite a beautiful last moment for him. The two boxes collided and erupted together, creating the Big Band Two. Everything inside the Pandorica, small amounts of cells, combined with the restoration power of the same Pandorica created a recreation of all of life throughout the universe. And it was broadcasted by an explosion happening all throughout space and time- an exploding TARDIS. Some materials inside the TARDIS were involved in the explosion and therefore also received part of the Pandorica's restoration power. But that was no harm, the Doctor was sure. Everything in the blue box was from somewhere in space and time that was being restored correctly- except for a Time Lord, but he was falling through the cracks on a rewind.

Then there was a cylindrical container with the hand of a Time Lord inside.

***DW*DW*DW***

It was all a blur as his life flashed before his eyes in reverse. It was almost like each moment in his life he could watch as it slipped away, erased from any living memory. He saw so many regrets, so many mistakes. But he also saw wonderful moments.

He slowed down for some moments, mostly just snapshots of his most recent regeneration. When he got to the night little Amelia Pond waited for him, he stopped and whispered softly to her, telling her about the TARDIS and the adventures they had that she would surely dream of.

"I think I'll skip the rest of the rewind," the Doctor whispered. "I hate repeats," he added, his voice cracking slightly before he kissed the top of her head.

But he didn't skip the rest. Not really. He saw Donna next, that day when Davros and the Daleks had tried to use the reality bomb to wipe out the universe. He watched as his companions all worked together to save the TARDIS, how Donna almost touched the cylinder with his severed hand, how the Doctor disabled the Daleks' plan.

And then he watched as he left all of his companions, every last one- Donna, Martha, Jack, Mickey, Sarah Jane, and Rose. Then he was alone. It was almost too much to bear the second time through. But then it was gone and replaced by more memories from before Donna.

He passed through Martha and Rose, more regrets filling his mind. After watching his eighth regeneration, the Doctor closed his eyes, unable to watch anymore, the memories flying by unwatched. When he finally opened his eyes, he was staring down at a wooden cot with stars on a mobile and swirls on writing on the sides. Inside that cot was a baby Time Lord, cared for by his parents, soon to explore his home planet.

The Doctor felt tears come to his eyes as he heard voices from the other room- voices of other Time Lords- his parents. It made both of his hearts ache to think that in the room right nest to his there were others of his own kind, his own species. It had been so long since he'd spoken to another Time Lord.

He reached out a trembling hand to turn the doorknob to the room next door, watching with anticipation to see his mother's face through the crack opening up between the door and the frame.

But he blinked. And then another crack, a white crack curved into a cruel smile, swallowed him whole, not allowing him to see even a wisp of his mother's ginger hair.

With one blink, his rewind ended and any memory of the Doctor was cleansed from all the universe.

**A/N: This is a short chapter to introduce the beginnings of what will happen, like a prologue. This is going to be a twist in the original plot, taking it AU for the end of the Big Bang. So, any thoughts? Interesting yet? More should come within at the most a week.**


	2. Things Unseen

**A/N: In this chapter, things get going a lot more. The Doctor has gone through the cracks in time after watching his own life flash before his eyes.**

The Doctor woke, knowing immediately that he should not have woken. Well, at least until Amy remembered him, if she remembered him at all. But there he was, third stall from the door.

Wait, stall?

The Doctor stared out the open door of his TARDIS to see that he was, indeed, in a stall, presumably in a public bathroom. He exited his blue box immediately to see where he was and why. He should have been, if he was remembered by Amy, brought back to her.

Unless she remembered him while she was in the loo. Which would mean that he was in the ladies'.

Once outside of the stall, he looked around to see that he was, as a matter of fact, in a women's bath room, only occupied by one other person. The Doctor stood nervously next to the sinks, waiting for the woman to exit her stall so he would know if it was Amy. This, he decided, was going to be a very awkward confrontation.

At last, the toilet flushed and the stall door opened. Out came a young woman, most likely in her early twenties, but not Amy. No, this girl had short brown hair with blue eyes. The Doctor was confused because Amy was not nearby, but he held his breath, waiting for the girl to notice him and most likely yell at him for being in the ladies'.

The girl walked right past him without a glance. The Doctor was surprised by this since girls usually were quite cross when a man was in the women's bathroom.

"Er, hi. Yes, sorry about this, I'll just be… going then," the Doctor said awkwardly. The girl gave him no response, as if she hadn't even heard him at all. She finished washing her hands and started to leave the bathroom. The Doctor followed suit, curious.

Once the Doctor had left the bathroom, he recognized where he was- it was the hospital in Leadworth, the one Rory had worked at. The girl he was following was heading toward the door quickly, so the Doctor ran to catch up with her.

"Excuse me, but do you know what year we're in?" the Doctor called after her. Again, she did not seem to hear him. Intrigued by this strange lack of response, the Doctor ran to get right next to her and waved his hand in front of her face. Nothing.

"Okay… so she can't even see me," the Doctor murmured, thinking aloud. He whirled around, walking toward a man sitting in a chair in the lobby, reading a newspaper.

"Hello," the Doctor greeted. The man didn't look up. At this point, a feeling close to panic started creeping into the Doctor's mind. He went to the center of the lobby and threw his hands in the air.

"Can anybody see me?" the Doctor yelled. Not a head turned his way. "Come on!" he yelled again. He stormed over to the front desk and knocked a ceramic coffee mug off of the desk. The receptionist yelped and bent to pick up the pieces.

"You alright, Patty?" a nurse asked the receptionist.

"I'm fine. My mug just fell, I have no idea how. I didn't think it was very close to the edge of the desk, but I guess it was," Patty replied. The nurse nodded and walked toward the stairs.

The Doctor swallowed hard and scanned the room frantically. Why couldn't anyone see or hear him? This was not good, not good at all.

Whenever the Doctor was confronted with something that he didn't understand, he knew he had two tools at his disposal- his sonic screwdriver and his TARDIS. He took out his sonic and scanned the surrounding area. Nothing seemed all that off, but there was a trace of something foreign, something alien.

"Right, so, this must be some sort of mass effect because of alien technology. But what? I've… I can't think of anything like this," the Doctor thought aloud. After all, there was no reason he couldn't talk to himself when no one around him could hear what he was saying. "Come on! Think," the Doctor told himself. He started pacing the lobby, careful not run into anyone so they wouldn't wonder what they'd run into.

"Come on, brain, why are you failing me now?" the Doctor scolded himself. He started making his way back to the women's bathroom.

This was unlike anything the Doctor had seen before. No one could sense him at all. Plus, there was the fact that he was alive at all. If Amy had remembered him to bring him back, that means that he should have been brought right to her. Instead, he'd woken up in a stall in the ladies'. Something was wrong, something very, very important, but he didn't know what. Nothing was making sense.

The Doctor entered the bathroom to find it almost empty, but he noticed a set of legs in the very stall that had his TARDIS in it.

That was not good. Very not good. If someone had walked in there, they would have discovered a police box in place of a toilet. That would not be okay. And, even if for some reason the chameleon circuit was working and the TARDIS had blended in, his beloved ship would most likely have disguised itself as a toilet, and the Doctor did not even want to think about the consequences of that.

So he burst open the stall door. Inside he found a woman leaning up against the door of his TARDIS. At least that means it wasn't disguised as a toilet. But the Doctor then took the time to notice just who was leaning up against his ship.

"Hello, sweetie," the woman said. It was River.

"Wait. You can see me?" the Doctor asked. This was a first. But why?

"Of course I can see you. I'm not in the habit of calling bathroom stall walls sweetie you know," River said with her eyebrows raised. The Doctor's brain began working overtime, trying to figure out what, exactly, was going on.

"Nevermind that. I don't know what's going on here. What do you know, River? You always seem to know things you shouldn't," the Doctor said, his brow furrowing as he tried to work through details.

"I don't have a lot of time. You're here because there's memories of you scattered throughout the universe, but you're not all the way here because there's not enough memory of you to bring you all the way back. You'd need someone with a very powerful memory to do that, like my mum," River explained.

The Doctor, luckily, processed information very quickly, so he was able to keep up. But still, what River was telling him was extraordinary. Memories of him were bringing him back part way. But wait.

"You said your mum," the Doctor stated. River gave him an almost scared look. She dove her hand into his front pocket and stole the key to his TARDIS.

"Hey! What are you doing?" the Doctor asked furiously. No one stole his TARDIS key. "Give that back!" he commanded. But River pressed a button on a device on her arm and was gone.

"Argh!" the Doctor grumbled, banging his head against the wall. River could be impossibly infuriating. That vortex manipulator of hers only made things worse.

Why had she stolen his key? And what in the universe was she talking about? He stormed out of the bathroom, still angry.

So here he was, stuck in a world where people couldn't see him except the woman that stole from him his key to his vehicle, without access to his TARDIS, and unable to make sense of anything. Plus, there was the fact that River had mentioned her mum, saying she had a strong enough memory to bring him back all the way.

"Okay. Plan time. I've got no TARDIS, no one can see me, and no other assets. Sounds like my kind of problem," the Doctor said. He exited the bathroom, thinking as he wandered toward the door out of the hospital.

All around him, people milled about, minding their lives. It was an eerie sort of experience, not being seen by anyone. The Doctor imagined that's what it must be like to be a ghost.

His mind was going a thousand directions when, finally, a useful word came to his head. He'd appeared in a hospital. Hospital. Nurses. Rory!

"Aha!" the Doctor exclaimed, giving a little skip as he ran out of the hospital and toward Rory's house. He knew where the man's house was from listening to Amy and him talk about home when they traveled with him on the TARDIS. He might be able to see the Doctor! After all, if River could see him, maybe it was a time traveler thing.

He ran, weaving in and out of people until he reached Rory's house and burst open his front door. Rory was in the kitchen and came running to the door when he heard it open.

"Oh, Rory, I've never been happier to see you," the Doctor said cheerfully. Rory squinted at the door, right through the Doctor. "I see you can't say the same," the Doctor intoned in a flat voice. Okay, so his theory on time travelers being able to see him was wrong, but another plan was soon blooming in his massive brain.

Rory shrugged and went upstairs. The Doctor dashed into the kitchen and began raiding Rory's fridge as quietly as he could. He didn't want Rory to come down to find items mysteriously floating in his house. The Doctor found the three things he was looking for quickly and set to work finishing it up.

After the Doctor was done with the items he'd taken, he stepped back to admire his work for a moment before dashing out of the house again.

On Rory's table then sat three things: fish fingers, custard, and an apple with a face carved into it.

**A/N: So, a lot happened and I know there's a lot to be explained still. Hopefully it all made sense and stays interesting! If you liked it or didn't, let me know!**


	3. Pond Frustrations

Time passes unusually slowly, the Doctor decided again. He waited and waited outside of Rory's house until he fell asleep on the ground from absolute boredom. When he awoke a few hours later, he walked back into Rory's house to find that the apple, fish fingers, and custard were still on the table. The Doctor sighed, figuring that Amy had presumably not seen them yet.

Where was she? She should be here, she should be wherever the Doctor was. Weirder yet, she should have been to Rory's house. After all, they were getting married.

Footsteps came toward the kitchen. Rory entered and stared, open-mouthed. The Doctor's face broke into a grin.

"Finally! So you can see me then?" the Doctor asked. Rory blinked several times and shook his head as if to clear it.

"Um, yeah," Rory replied. His eyes were still wide with surprise. "Wait, see you _now_?" Rory realized what the Doctor had said. The Doctor ignored his comment, focusing on things that were much more important. There was a lot to figure out, and catching Rory up on the previous happenings of the Doctor's very confusing day was not high on the list of priorities.

"Right then! So, who all saw my food?" the Doctor asked, not being able to help grinning. It was amazing, being seen, the Doctor realized. He made a mental note to never take being seen for granted ever again.

"_Your_ food?" Rory scoffed, raising his eyebrows. The Doctor poked Rory in the forehead.

"Focus, Rory, this is important," the Doctor said more seriously. Rory shook his head again and thought for a moment.

"Well, my two best friends were over. They both saw it," Rory answered. The Doctor began pacing. So his two best friends. Amy was one, obviously, but who was the other?

"Who are your friends again?" the Doctor inquired. Rory was still, annoyingly, staring at him. "Oh, for god's sakes man, stop staring," the Doctor chided.

"Sorry, strange man walks into my house and puts food on my table, _my_ food, mind, and starts asking about my friends. I'm starting to wonder why I haven't called the police yet," Rory retorted. The Doctor stopped in his tracks and then walked up, staring Rory right in the face, a little too closely perhaps.

"Strange, yes, but aren't you used to me by now?" the Doctor asked for reassurance. Rory stared at him like he was mad. Which he was, of course, but it was still a stare.

"By now? I've known you for five minutes," Rory said in confusion.

The Doctor froze. Five minutes. That meant… Rory didn't remember who he was. That meant the Rory did not remember traveling with the Doctor. There was no Prisoner Zero, no vampires in Venice, no two dream worlds, no Earth eating people, no Pandorica, at least not for Rory.

He needed to find Amy. If he could find Amy, then maybe she could remember him. She had a powerful enough memory, he was sure-

Wait. River had said her mother had a memory strong enough to bring the Doctor back. An almost audible click happened in the Doctor's massive brain.

"Oh," the Doctor gasped softly. Rory cocked on eyebrow, looking even more confused than a minute ago. "Oh. She's…" the Doctor whispered, staring straight through Rory for a moment, focusing on working out the details in his head. Then, the Doctor hit himself in the head.

"I should have realized! No wonder, she inherited her mother's flirting habits…" the Doctor spoke to himself as if Rory wasn't even there, realizing River's parentage. Rory cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"Um, what?" Rory asked. The Doctor's eyes snapped back into focus on Rory's face. This was important. This was very, very important.

"Rory, I need you to tell me who your friends are. What are their names?" the Doctor commanded. Rory took a step back.

"Well, uh, there's Pond-" Rory started to say, but the Doctor cut him off.

"Pond? You call her by her last name?" the Doctor said. He didn't know why this was important, not yet, but for some reason he needed to know.

"Yeah?" Rory drew out the word almost more like a question than an answer.

"Why?" the Doctor pressed. He had to know. Pond could be either River or Amy. He had to know which of them remembered him.

Rory shrugged with a little exasperation. The door opened and someone walked in the door and into the kitchen where Rory and the Doctor were talking. It was a girl with brown hair- the girl the Doctor had seen earlier in the bathroom. When she saw the Doctor, her face split into a grin.

"You're here. You're really here! When I saw the fish fingers and custard, and then the apple… My mum used to carve apples like that. She told me her mum did the same for her," the girl said.

So this girl, this girl was, who, Pond? This was who Rory mentioned? She remembered him, so she had to be. But was she River or Amy? Either one could be true. This Pond said her mum's mum carved the apples- that could be either Amy's mum or River's grandmother. This was really quite confusing, and he had to figure it out right away.

But, no, it couldn't be Amy. And it couldn't be River. It didn't look like either of them! No, no wait, it could be River. River… was Amy and Rory's child which meant… oh, his poor TARDIS. She could have been conceived on the TARDIS mid-flight, which meant she could have Time Lord qualities in her DNA.

So then it was River. Or, maybe, Amy's appearance had been altered due to the new reality. Come to think of it, the Doctor realized that a number of things could have happened. This was a new reality and he didn't know the rules yet.

"Oh, hey, Pond," Rory greeted her. She glanced at Rory and then turned back to the Doctor, walking closer to him.

"What's your name?" the Doctor asked her. Pond (he decided to just think of her as Pond until he found out who she was) smiled at him.

"You didn't ever tell me yours. Why should I tell you mine?" Pond challenged him. The Doctor silently cursed the fact that no one accepted the Doctor as his proper name. It was really quite a nice name to be called, he thought.

"I met you when you were young, right?" the Doctor asked. If she wouldn't respond to the direct question, he would have to find enough clues to work it out.

"Of course. Very young," Pond answered. Sadly, that wasn't enough information. He'd met Amy as a seven year old girl, but he had no idea if he'd met River as a young girl too because they always met in the wrong order.

She was being quite challenging, but then again, both of the Pond girls he knew were rather impossible. Both. That word still shocked him, that River was Amy's daughter. But there was no time to focus on that. He had to focus on finding out which of these impossible women was standing right in front of him.

"Look, Pond, I don't know how much you know about me, but you need to trust me," the Doctor said, grabbing her hand. She looked down at her hand, grasped in his, and then back up at his desperate face. Then, she smiled.

"I didn't quite remember you being so hot the last time we met. Well, I guess I was only a little girl," Pond said with her smile turned to a smirk. The Doctor groaned, squeezing his eyes shut and dropping the brunette's hand. Girls could be so infuriating.

So then, she was definitely one of the two. She was avoiding his questions and flirting in one move. It really must be an inherited trait. Anyway, his day was really quite full of unusual. Total so far he had: disappearing from time, coming back, his TARDIS landing in the ladies', not being sensed by anyone, running into River, her stealing his TARDIS key, realizing River was Amy and Rory's daughter, being seen again, running into a mysterious Pond woman, and learning River was quite possibly part Time Lord.

It was a long day.

"Uh, okay, what's going on? Pond, is this… the Doctor? The other Time Lord you said you'd met?" Rory asked. He'd finally had a chance to gather his thoughts and form a question. This was a very confusing day for him, the Doctor imagined, but it was not nearly as much so as the Doctor's. Rory had just asked using an important word- other.

"Other Time Lord?" the Doctor repeated. Rory nodded. Pond held up her hands.

"Part Time Lord here," she said, motioning to herself. Okay. So she must be River, then. Unless she was lying about being a Time Lord. The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and used to process what sorts of life forms were in the area, searching for Time Lords.

It read confirmed. So that meant that this Pond was- wait. The sonic picked up another alien reading. Time Lord, again. And again. And again…

"_What_?" the Doctor exclaimed. His day, he learned, was about to get even more complicated.

**A/N: Remember, the Doctor didn't know about who River was since this is set near the end of the Big Bang. Also, he doesn't know he meets River as a baby or a young girl in the space suit, but he realizes that he very well might meet her as a little girl because of the two never meeting in the right order.**

**The Doctor's confused. I don't blame him, he's having a hard day.**

**Anyway, review to let me know what you think whether you liked it or not!**


	4. Been a Long Day

**A/N: We left off with the Doctor's sonic giving him readings indicating that there were Time Lords present. Now, the Doctor begins to pick his way through the confusion. Enjoy!**

The Doctor's mind then did the impossible- it went absolutely blank for more than a second. And then, his mind returned at twice the speed as normal. Time Lord DNA. But… how was that possible? And one of them was a Pond girl, possibly River, who was to be Amy and Rory's child. Or it could even be Amy. Very confusing.

What?

"What do you mean, what?" Rory asked. He looked, for once, less confused than the Doctor.

"My sonic, it's saying that there's other Time Lord DNA patterns on this planet," the Doctor answered passively, mostly focusing on his madly whirring brain. Rory started to talk again, but the Doctor cut him off. "Brain thinking. Shut up!" he yelled. This was not unusual when the Doctor needed to focus. Human voices didn't exactly have anything useful to say when his massive brain was thinking in ways beyond them.

"You mean you don't know?" Pond asked with a little bit of surprise in her voice. The Doctor glared at her, giving her a clear message to shut up along with Rory. He should have known- she disobeyed.

"Oh, come on, you're supposed to be the one who caused it," she added. The Doctor threw his hands in the air.

"What?" he exclaimed. Nothing was making sense at all, and now he was being told that it was his fault. This was really not his lucky day.

"There's a bunch of versions of the story, but they all say you did it. One says you're basically some sort of good wizard who shared his Time Lord gifts with the world. But that's the fairytale version, the kid's story. The freaky horror one says you reproduce asexually like a little cell and made copies of yourself. I always thought it was more of the first one," Pond explained.

The Doctor get close to her face, examining her eyes. There was something familiar there, something he couldn't quite place. If she was really a Time Lord, or partly so, like his sonic readings were saying, then he should be able to recognize her. It was a Time Lord thing- they could always recognize each other regardless of form. Pond's eyes gave off a certain glow that he was accustomed to seeing back on Gallifrey- her eyes had a timeless look, much like his own.

He hadn't even realized how close he'd gotten to her face until she wriggled her eyebrows at him with a half-smile half-smirk. He cleared his throat awkwardly and backed up a little.

"Asexual, no. But…" the Doctor got his mind back on topic. There was more to be understood than one fascinatingly annoying girl in his way. He had Earth now populated by some partial Time Lords.

"But what? Please don't tell me that second story's true. I never liked that one," Rory groaned. The Doctor clapped his hand over Rory's mouth to make him stop talking.

"My hand," the Doctor stated like it was the most obvious thing in the universe.

"Your hand?" Pond repeated. The Doctor moved the fingers on his hand not occupied by stopping Rory from running his mouth. That was it! He never should have kept that hand lying around, not when it could get him into trouble.

"I had a hand lying around my TARDIS when it exploded and rebooted the universe. And… that hand was a metacrisis just waiting to happen! When touched by a human, humans gain some Time Lord DNA, and the hand forms into a partial human, partial Time Lord. But if that hand exploded into many pieces and touched several humans at once…" the Doctor mused aloud. It was all coming to him now. Oddly enough, Pond seemed to be keeping up with him, at least slightly. She kept nodding along as he explained.

"Aw, it was the second one, wasn't it?" Rory said. The Doctor hadn't realized he'd let go of Rory's mouth. Both the Doctor and Pond ignored him.

"But why didn't the hand sprout a Time Lord version with one heart?" she questioned. The Doctor thought for a moment.

"Because there wasn't enough substance. It exploded. Aha! But then, that means that no human qualities were transferred to a Time Lord entity, so more Time Lord qualities must have been transferred to those touched by the fragments!" the Doctor exclaimed, finally beginning to understand part of his day. He then stopped and made a face. "That's a rather disgusting concept, isn't it?" he realized. Rory nodded vigorously.

So his hand had created a mass metacrisis. This was not good, very not good. Earth wasn't built well to cope with Time Lords roaming it, searching for some way to explore time like they were supposed to. They would be lost, confused, some might not even realize what they were until one day when they're supposed to die they start glowing orange instead and turn into someone completely different. No one should have to go through that alone, not knowing what was going on.

Regeneration was a frightening thing, as the Doctor knew. He'd been forced to regenerate once against his will when he was exiled from Gallifrey for causing trouble. And he'd regenerated alone before. It was not to be done that way.

"Right then. I accidentally made more Time Lords. That's new. Never done that before," the Doctor sighed. Well, his statement wasn't completely true. He'd accidentally created Jenny in a way, but that was only one, not multiples. And it wasn't really the same thing, anyway. "What's the date?" he asked. It may have seemed an unrelated question to most, but the Doctor was a complex being, and his mind had already moved on by then.

"June 25th, why?" Rory answered. The Doctor knew this was important. The next day Rory was supposed to marry Amy. So either this Pond was Amy, or Amy should really be coming around the house.

"Rory, are you engaged?" the Doctor inquired. Rory's response was somewhat unexpected- he shifted awkwardly on his feet and looked down at the ground.

"Uh, no. I had a dream I was though," Rory mumbled. So Rory wasn't getting married then? This was very different. The Doctor had a fleeting thought that he should really write down all the things he noticed that were different in this rebooted universe so he wouldn't lose track.

He cleared his throat and looked all around the room, anywhere but at Pond or the Doctor. That would have to be dealt with later. First, he had to find out who Pond was and get back to his TARDIS (with the key) and find out how the metacrisis situation had progressed.

"Great. Now, Pond, you can either tell me who you are, or I can leave you here in a world of humans where you'll never understand all I could teach you about our kind," the Doctor said firmly. He didn't have the time to screw around. His bright eyes stared intensely into hers, and an understanding passed between them.

"Show me your time machine and I'll tell you," Pond counter-offered. That was good enough for the Doctor. He reached forward and grabbed her hand, pulling her out Rory's door and began running toward the hospital.

"Wait! Where are you going?" Rory yelled after them. He started chasing them down the street.

"Hospital. That's where I parked my TARDIS," the Doctor responded.

The three of them ran, all with different facial expressions, toward the hospital. The Doctor looked determined and had a fairly serious face on as he contemplated the outcome of the mass metacrisis. Rory looked confused and bewildered. And Pond smiled like this was the most exciting day of her life. It probably was, the Doctor realized. Today she was learning the there were more people like her, more Time Lords, and she'd met the man responsible. A man she'd met once before.

The Doctor burst through the front doors to the hospital and walked quickly through the small crowd of people milling about their business, heading straight for the bathroom.

"Oh, and sorry about your mug," the Doctor apologized as he passed the desk lady.

She looked at him like he was mad, but that was only to be expected. He was mad. A madman with a box- a box that was currently in a bathroom. The three, Pond, Rory and the Doctor, continued on, not stopping again until they reached the bathrooms. When the Doctor approached the ladies', Rory and Pond did a double-take.

"You parked in the women's bathroom?" Rory said, eyebrows raised in disbelief. The Doctor did not dignify that with a response until he'd made sure the bathroom was unoccupied.

"Not my fault. She's a Type 40, not always the most accurate. Sorry, old girl, but it's true. And to be honest, we were sort of falling backward in time, so that complicates things," the Doctor explained, pushing open the third stall. Inside was his TARDIS with a key taped to a note on the door.

The note read- _Hello, Sweetie. _The Doctor groaned and ripped up the note, taking the key and inserting it into the TARDIS lock. With a click, the front doors opened wide and the Doctor gestured for Pond and Rory to enter his ship.

"It's… bigger on the inside," Rory gasped. The Doctor grinned at that- it was his favorite bit. It was so very easy to impress humans, but he would never tire of it. Pond, on the other hand, immediately started looking at all of the mechanisms on the console. It was only to be expected- she'd most likely been wanting, craving, to see this sort of machinery before her, and now she did.

It reminded the Doctor of the first time he'd seen his TARDIS. The most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

"Dimensionally transcendent," Pond deduced correctly. That annoyed the Doctor slightly, but not too much. It only proved that he was not alone. There were Time Lords out there. He was no longer the Last of the Time Lords. Wasn't this what he had always been hoping for? If this was his dream, then why didn't he feel happy? No, all he felt inside was dread that he had somehow caused this terrible mistake simply by leaving his trash sitting around.

And because of that mistake, he now had quite the dilemma on his hands besides just a newly regenerated (yes, he realized the pun and laughed inwards) race of Time Lords running amok, but he also happened to have caused one of the most frustrating women in his life to become a Time Lord.

The Doctor approached Pond and trapped her between the console and his own body. He was not aware of the fact that her heartbeat- heartbeat_**s**_- had become faster. Then again, the Doctor rarely realized how great of an impact he had on other people. "Well then, Pond, a promise is a promise. Who are you?" the Doctor asked in a serious voice.

**A/N: Ah yes, the wonderful question- River or Amy? I just wanted to say that I will continue referring to any females as Time Lords as well as males, not as Time Ladies. Both forms can be used, so I choose the unisex Time Lord title.**

**The poor Doctor's bad day will only continue, but don't worry, he'll start to find his way around these dilemmas. Reviews are like hugs- good for the soul.**


	5. About the Girl

Pond bit her lip for a moment before answering. The Doctor searched her eyes, again looking for a familiar spark to let him recognize her, but he could not place it.

"When I was younger, I had dreams about a madman who made the world make sense," Pond whispered, her words brushing against the Doctor's memory.

"With a box," the Doctor breathed.

"Sorry?" Pond said, brow coming together slightly, not understanding what he meant.

"A madman with a box. That's what… oh, nevermind," the Doctor murmured. He waited for Pond to continue. All was quiet. The Doctor didn't make a sound, and Rory didn't dare to interrupt their strange interaction.

"And that strange man fell out of the sky one day, knowing so much about me, about what was different about me. He told me he was a Time Lord and that he had a space ship that was also a time machine. And he ate fish fingers and custard," Pond recalled with a smile. Then, she coughed and doubled over.

"Pond? Pond? Are you alright?" the Doctor asked, holding her steady. The Doctor hadn't noticed before now, but she was frail. Sick, even.

"She'd been coming down with something over the past few days. I don't know what it is, but it seems to have gotten worse today," Rory explained as he approached the pair. The Doctor looked at the girl's form and noticed something. Her skin was strangely orange.

"Step back, Rory," the Doctor warned. Rory stopped mid-step for a second but then continued advancing.

"No, I'm a nurse. I can help her!" Rory insisted. The Doctor retreated away from Pond. Her hands were starting to glow brightly now, an orange mist seeming to steam off of her. The Doctor pulled Rory back a few steps. "What's happening to her?" Rory asked with a tint of fear to his voice. The Doctor couldn't find the words to explain. How could he? It would be much easier if Rory just saw.

"So this is what it's like, then? I've heard about it happening to people, but-" Pond started to say with a tone containing some excitement, but she was cut off by her own screams as she threw her head back.

Orange regeneration energy burst from her head and arms, shooting into the TARDIS. Thankfully her regeneration didn't seem nearly as violent as the Doctor's last, so no fires were being lit, but an enormous heat was still emanating from Pond. Rory looked on with an expression somewhere between bewilderment and fear while the Doctor contemplated his own mixed emotions. It had been so long since he'd actually witnessed a regeneration. He'd almost forgotten how spectacular a sight it was. But then again, it was terribly painful as well. That much was made obvious by the girl's shrieks of agony as every cell in her body changed, making her into a new person.

As the orange light started to decrease, the Doctor noticed her hair. Red hair. He would know that hair anywhere.

"Amelia Pond," the Doctor murmured. Amy shook her head and looked around, specifically at Rory for a few seconds and then at the Doctor.

"Hey, how'd you know my name?" she inquired, sounding disappointed. She shook her head again, clearly enjoying her new great amounts of red hair.

Amy Pond. In front of the Doctor was the girl who waited, mad, impossible, Amy Pond. And now she _was_ the impossible- a Time Lord. Oh, what had he done?

"Well, this is fun. Do you have a mirror in this box, Doctor?" Amy asked with some excitement. The Doctor wordlessly pointed to the scanner, which currently had a reflective screen on display. If the Doctor was in any sort of shock, then he didn't know what to call Rory. Well, besides unconscious that was.

The Doctor wasn't exactly sure at what point Rory had passed out, but it had probably happened somewhere along the same time as the man's best friend started spewing what looked like sparkly orange fire out of her appendages. That could wreak havoc on a delicate human's mind.

Amy was laughing and playing with her new face and hair in the mirror. She tossed her ginger hair around and made ridiculous faces, stretching her eyes and mouth as far as they would go.

Regeneration- it could make the girls go mad.

"Oh, Doctor, I'm _gorgeous_!" Amy exclaimed, laughing once more and winking at herself in the reflection on the scanner. The Doctor bent down to slap Rory gently on the cheeks, waking him up. Wake up, the Doctor thought, your girlfriend's flirting with herself. But wait, no, Amy wasn't even Rory's girlfriend anymore, was she? This was all driving the Doctor bonkers.

"Uh," Rory groaned, rubbing his head where he'd hit it on the floor after passing out cold. He would probably receive a nice multi-colored bruise from that one. Rory blinked several times to make sure that the sight before his eyes was real. "What?" he grumbled, still clearly not processing what had happened. There was no time to explain to Rory the workings of a Time Lord's body.

"Look at me! I'm brand new!" Amy giggled. Rory stared open-mouthed, but Amy didn't seem to notice. She was too focused on the image of herself on the scanner and then approaching the Doctor. "How did you know my name? Did you know all along?" Amy questioned the Doctor with a certain amount of suspicion.

"Long story, not for right now. Right now I've got a problem on my hands," the Doctor decided to say. Explaining that he knew Amy and Rory from a previous version of reality was a story best told when there was spare time, and currently the Doctor had mistakes to fix.

"So then what's for right now?" Amy asked. The Doctor shook his head, thinking so many thoughts.

"Well, for you, it's time to decide," the Doctor replied. "Are you coming with me?" he offered. The Doctor couldn't believe he was even asking. It almost seemed like betraying the Amy he knew, the human Amy in his past life by asking. But it wasn't like he could very well just leave her, a Time Lord, alone on Earth, wondering what she really was.

"Of course I will!" Amy agreed with a smile. Rory cleared his throat, asking to be noticed.

"What about me? Am I supposed to just go back to a normal life when I've just found out so much more about Time Lords?" Rory asked. The Doctor grinned at him.

"Course not. You can come too," the Doctor offered him the same thing he offered Amy. Rory's face slowly started to gain a smile. The Doctor spun around in a circle once before hitting some controls necessary for flying the TARDIS. Amy, curious as she was, pushed down a lever, and the TARDIS made a loud dinging noise. "Best not to touch anything until you actually know how," the Doctor told her with a push of another button.

The Doctor flew his TARDIS into space, up above the Earth's atmosphere and extended the shields to about twenty feet beyond the doors before opening up the door.

"And this is what it means to be a Time Lord," the Doctor proclaimed, gesturing out the door.

Amy and Rory crept closer, getting a better look. Both of them gasped in amazement at the sight before them- Earth was the size of a playground ball and the moon was just a marble. Beyond those two figures, there were thousands and thousands of stars, lighting up space like little pinpricks through black fabric. Amy sat down and let her feet dangle outside of the door.

"Time and space, all of it can be my…" the Doctor paused before correcting himself, "our, backyard. This is what we were born for!" he finished, not being able to stop himself from grinning like an idiot. That grin was infectious, so soon Amy and Rory had similar smiles and were laughing at the pure idea of such great adventure. "Well then, enough fun for today. Off to bed with you! Amy's just regenerated, so she'll especially need some rest," the Doctor said. Amy and Rory got up and shut the door before looking to the Doctor and waiting.

"Well? What are you waiting for? Off to bed!" the Doctor pushed them along. They looked at him some more.

"Er, we don't have anywhere to sleep," Rory pointed out. The Doctor mentally slapped himself, forgetting that Rory and Amy hadn't yet been on his ship and therefore would not know where their rooms were.

"Of course you don't follow me," the Doctor responded, leading Amy and Rory back through the halls until he reached two doors side by side that led to simple bedrooms. "This should be good enough for now. The more the TARDIS gets to know you, the more she'll probably add to your room," the Doctor explained. Rory bade the two goodnight and entered his new bedroom to go to sleep. Amy lingered a little bit longer.

"So I just regenerated. And we're in a TARDIS. And you expect me to sleep?" Amy asked in disbelief. The Doctor shrugged.

"Tomorrow will be a big day," the Doctor answered her.

She moved from where she had been leaning against the wall next to her bedroom door and twisted the doorknob, opening the door. Inside was a blue room with a high bed and even a picture frame on the wall containing a picture of Amy as a little girl at the National Museum. The Doctor had followed Amy into her room in curiosity, fascinated by the fact that the TARDIS had given Amy's room some character already. He supposed it was because Amy was a Time Lord, so she'd be able to communicate with the TARDIS subconsciously without even realizing it.

"Doctor, you knew our names. Me and Rory. How did you know?" Amy asked the Doctor without warning as she sat down on her bed. He was caught off guard. How was he supposed to answer that question? He supposed he could always take a shot at the truth.

"I knew you both in a different version of reality," the Doctor admitted softly, sitting down on Amy's bed next to her. "You… she… was not the same."

Amy looked at him, and the Doctor again noticed the subtle difference in her eyes. Those eyes… they reminded him of his young days, gallivanting around Gallifrey as a reckless boy, boasting that he would one day be the greatest of adventurers. Amy's eyes held the same desire for adventure fueled not only by her natural tendencies but by the fire that burned inside of a Time Lord.

"Tell me about me. The one you knew before," Amy said, not really asking. No, she was telling him it was okay to share what he'd been wanting to ever since he'd seen a little while ago who she was.

The Doctor relaxed and fell back onto the bed in a more comfortable position, propping himself up on his elbows. Amy leaned against the backboard, waiting for him to start.

"Amelia Pond. I met her when she was a little girl. She had a crack in her wall, a time crack, and it scared her, rightly so. But she wasn't scared of the strange man who destroyed her tool shed and fell out of the sky and are fish fingers with custard," the Doctor paused, the relaxed and nostalgic smile fading from his face.

"But then I left. I told her I'd be back in five minutes, and I'd meant it, but in my five minutes, little Amelia had grown up. A lot had happened. Twelve years had happened. She waited all night in her garden for me to come back, but it took me twelve years. I came back, though. She hit me with a cricket bat, would you believe it?" the Doctor's smile returned. With one look at Amy, the Doctor could tell she definitely believed she'd hit him.

"Stupid me, I didn't realize she was Amelia. I couldn't believe that little girl who wasn't afraid of anything had grown up into a gorgeous woman. She pretended to be a policewoman, but she was actually just a kissogram. Then she helped me save Earth. I left her again for five minutes and came back two years later. I made the same mistake twice. And in those two years, she'd gotten engaged. But she still ran away with me and we had the best of adventures together. Eventually I realized that I would have to get her fiancée back to her, so I picked him up and he joined us on our adventures for a while. They were going to get married soon. It was going to be wonderful," the Doctor came to a stop in his story, reaching a point where he didn't know where to go from.

Amy didn't push him to go any further. Throughout his story she'd remained quiet and absorbed all of this information about the Amy the Doctor had known before. She'd gotten closer and closer to him as she listened intently to every word.

"You loved her, didn't you? But you gave her up," Amy stated.

Like before, there really wasn't a question in her words. She knew. In that way, she was just like the Amy the Doctor had known. Actually, she was like Amy in every way except for being a Time Lord and had slightly different memories. It almost broke the Doctor's hearts to hear Amy say those words in such a soft and understanding voice. It hurt because she was right.

"She was so very human. I couldn't risk damaging something so fragile and beautiful as humanity," the Doctor whispered. By this point, Amy was close to his face.

"She's a strong girl," Amy whispered back. The Doctor knew Amy wasn't just talking about humanity. But he didn't want to think about what else she was talking about. Instead, he rolled off of the bed and onto his feet.

"Goodnight, Amy," the Doctor said, leaving without another word.

He'd already said all the words he had for one night. He'd spilled his heart talking about the Amy he'd loved and given up for a man who would be a true and human hero for her without ever saying he'd loved her at all. But Amy knew the words that lay between the lines. Maybe it was because she had a Time Lord's mind now. Or maybe she'd always known but been afraid to say it.

**A/N: Now that I've finished Differences in Character, this is really the only chapter fic I'm working on, so it should be updated fairly frequently.**

**So Amy has learned about herself from the previous reality as told by the Doctor. What will she do with this information? And if you're wondering how Rory fits into this whole thing, don't worry, these questions will be addressed.**

**Review to let me know what you liked, didn't like, or where you'd like to see things go. I love that 10 people have this alerted already, but I'd like it even more if I could get some feedback from you guys.**


	6. Saving the World With Stethoscopes

When the Doctor woke up the next morning, the TARDIS was quiet. His ship was flying quietly and safely, and his two new (old?) companions were still sleeping soundly in their beds. This left the Doctor alone with his mind, a place he often found himself. And those two had a lot to talk about.

His brain immediately went in three directions, which may have been impossible for anyone who wasn't him. The first part of his brain went to memories of Amy and Rory and how they no longer remembered him. The second part of his brain went to the metacrisis that was really just a plain crisis. The third part of his brain was thinking of how easily Amy had understood him the night before. The Doctor shut down the first and third direction and focused on the second, knowing that one was the most important on a large scale.

There could be countless mostly Time Lord beings out there, wandering without a cause or any idea what they were. That was a very dangerous thing. When uninformed or badly trained, a Time Lord could be a deadly weapon, something the Doctor didn't like to remember. He'd seen that much during the Last Great Time War. He'd seen the Master turned into a weapon without him even knowing what was going on inside his own head.

"Morning, Doctor," Rory greeted the Doctor. The Time Lord had not even noticed Rory entering the console room until he spoke.

"Morning," the Doctor greeted Rory brightly. Amy wasn't far behind. "And to you," the Doctor added as the redhead came into the console room.

"So… what do we do now?" Rory asked. The Doctor stopped his brain from working in full-on think mode and paid attention to his companions.

"Now, we have to find out how far this event has spread. It could have reached across all sorts of galaxies, but it was most likely contained in the span of about a year. For all I know as of now, nonhuman races could have been affected by the Time Lord DNA," the Doctor explained. It was a disturbing thought to have as the Doctor imagined partially Time Lord Silurians or Daleks.

"How are we supposed to do that? Search every planet for Time Lords?" Rory asked, seeing what he perceived to be a flaw in the Doctor's plan.

"No, we'll find a planet with a superior broadcasting device and use the sonic with it to pick up any disturbances that seem Time Lord," Amy corrected Rory.

The Doctor had just been about to say something to the same effect, but he wasn't mad that Amy had said it. In fact, he was thrilled. Now he could talk to someone besides his own brain about these sorts of things, someone who could understand.

"Oh. Right, of course," Rory said. He didn't sound completely convinced, but he was smart enough to know he wasn't the smartest person in the room. The Doctor returned to his controls to fly his blue box to a new planet, one with a large broadcasting device.

"To Radiora!" the Doctor proclaimed, sending the TARDIS shaking slightly as he landed her on the planet of Radiora.

The Doctor, Amy, and Rory stepped outside of the box to find a planet that had more metal in sight than Earth had grass. They appeared to have landed in the middle of some sort of city. The main inhabitants were tiny creatures that flew around almost like specks of light, intelligent specks of light. These beings zipped around the city in a hurry, each one no bigger than the palm of a person's hand.

"What are they?" Amy gasped.

"Wavoxes. Little workaholics, if you ask me. They've spent generations building this city, made it into one huge communication radio, trying to reach out to nearby galaxies and make contact. They know life's out there, but they just haven't met any yet," the Doctor responded. A little Wavox flew straight over Rory's head, making him duck just in case.

"Amazing," Rory murmured.

The Doctor walked forward, heading for the center of the city where there was a large mass of metal, obvious some sort of centerpiece to the metal device that encompassed the city. Once they'd reached the center, the Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the device.

"Bloody intelligent little buggers, the Wavoxes. It's a shame they can't seem to find the right frequency to make their communication city device work. Ah, but they're determined. In about, oh, twenty years from now, they'll figure it out," the Doctor said with fondness. There was a low rumble from the metal and the Doctor put the sonic close to his ear. "Ah. Oh, well that's good news. Fairly good news," he said with mild approval.

"What is it?" Amy questioned.

"There's about a hundred or so life forms that have been affected by the metacrisis, and they're all concentrated in one galaxy- on one planet, in fact. Earth," the Doctor told his companions with a genuine smile on his face.

Having only humans be affected made the Doctor's life easier. Now he would be able to concentrate his efforts to find the Time Lords on one planet, one point in time. And though a hundred sounded like a lot at first, relatively speaking, that was a small percentage of the humans who could have been affected. The Doctor laughed, feeling happy in spite of the world always seeming to conspire against him, because this time, even though things may look difficult, perhaps he was finally getting a sort of second chance.

"Right then. Come along, you two. We've got a new race of Time Lords to hunt down!" the Doctor exclaimed with a certain degree of excitement.

The Doctor raced back to his TARDIS, grabbing Amy and Rory and pulling them with him. It was fabulous to the Doctor- a new adventure, and his two best friends were back to help him. Well, mostly back. They didn't remember him from before, only one instance when he'd apparently met Amy as a little girl, a slightly different encounter than the one he remembered.

Once inside the blue box, the Doctor set his coordinates back for Earth, for a building this time instead of a bathroom stall. He shuddered, thinking that out of all places his inconsistent box had landed him, that may possibly have been the worst of all.

"Doctor, how are we going to find the other Time Lords?" Rory asked. It was a good question, a very good one, one that the Doctor himself had been contemplating just the night before.

"Exactly. These Time Lords will have been born into perfectly normal human families and look human and act mostly human. But they will have faster brains, regeneration capabilities, a desire to travel in time, and two heartbeats. Really, it should be easy enough to find them. We, er, tend to stick out sometimes," the Doctor replied. Rory nodded, understanding what the Doctor meant. The three landed on Earth, five minutes after they'd left originally even though they'd been gone for longer.

"But how are we supposed to search the whole Earth for a hundred people? What, three people with stethoscopes?" Amy scoffed. The Doctor grinned.

"No, not just three people. It's time I pay a visit to some other old friends of mine," the Doctor said, tapping Amy on the nose as he spoke. She didn't seem confused, only interested. The three exited the TARDIS and were met with some people who did not look ultimately very thrilled with them.

The Doctor had indeed landed on Earth, but he had landed in the middle of a place called the Torchwood Institute. The Doctor put his hands up as he heard a few clicks as guns were pointed in his direction and at his companions.

"Oh, must you always go for the guns?" the Doctor complained. A group of ten soldier-type people all stared intently at the Doctor, Amy, and Rory and kept the three in their gun sights. "Look, I know your old Queen Victoria wasn't exactly my biggest fan, but I thought we'd gotten past all that by now," the Doctor said with some level of annoyance.

No guns were lowered.

"Records indicate that the Doctor travels in a blue box, sometimes accompanied by various humans. You must be the Doctor, even though we don't have visual records of your current face, Time Lords are known to change faces," one woman in the group of soldiers announced.

"Yes, yes, you could write my biography. But we've got more important things to tend to!" the Doctor retorted. The woman looked taken aback. "So, whoever you are, I suggest you phone a man by the name of Jack Harkness and tell him the Doctor is in," the Doctor continued with a cheeky grin. The woman soldier gave him a look of disdain, but she picked up her phone and punched in some numbers, never taking her eyes off the Doctor.

"Doctor? Why do they have guns pointed at us? How is _this_ your plan?" Rory hissed while the woman dialed a number. The Doctor ignored Rory in favor of listening to the phone call unfolding in front of them.

"Hello, ma'am," the soldier woman said into her phone. So, she hadn't called Jack like the Doctor had told her, unless Jack was going by ma'am now. Which wouldn't be all the surprising. "The Doctor's here, ma'am." A few more seconds of silence. "He asked to speak to Captain Jack Harkness, ma'am." There was another full minute of silence while the woman's face being progressively darker and more frustrated. "Yes, I understand, ma'am," the woman said in a resigned voice before hanging up her phone. Without a word to anyone else, she dialed another number.

"Captain Jack Harkness," the woman greeted gravely over the phone. "Yes, I have a message for you. The Doctor is in."

The woman soldier made a signal for her fellow soldiers to lower their weapons and return to their positions. She, however, kept her gun aimed at the Doctor, sometimes flicking its aim toward Amy or Rory.

"Who is Captain Jack Harkness?" Amy whispered to the Doctor. He smiled, knowing this would be a very interesting day. There was never a boring day when Jack was in the room.

"He's an old friend, and he should be able to help us," the Doctor explained. A man appeared out of thin air in front of the Doctor, Amy, Rory, and their captor.

"You called?" Jack greeted with a killer smile and a wink. The soldier did not appear to be overly thrilled with Jack's presence.

"Yes, I called with a message for-" the soldier started to answer Jack, but she was cut off.

"I was talking to the Doctor. You can leave us now, I've got this," Jack dismissed her. She left in a huff. "Doctor, Doctor, you've changed again! Not bad, this time around," Jack said with a casual air about him. "And who are these two lovely companions of yours?"

"This is Amy and Rory," the Doctor introduced. "And Amy's the reason I called for you." Jack gave a short laugh and smirked.

"What, are you inviting me to your wedding? Because I was under the impression that this was a work call," Jack laughed. The Doctor rolled his eyes slightly.

"No, that's not why I called. Now, I should really introduce you more properly," the Doctor started. "Rory, Amy, this is Captain Jack Harkness, part of the Torchwood Institute. Jack, this is Rory, a human from the 21st century. And this is Amy, a Time Lord."

Jack's jaw dropped.

**A/N: The Doctor needs help searching the Earth for Time Lords, so where else does he turn but to an institute created partially to capture him? And here's the return of Captain Jack, because the Doctor has to be able to trust someone at the Torchwood Institute.**

**So, how do you like it so far? Feel free to give me your honest opinion- it really encourages me to write more when I get some feedback from you guys.**


	7. Missions for Time Travelers

**A/N: The Doctor turns to Torchwood and Jack? Read, enjoy, and review!**

"Wait so… you're saying she's a-" Jack started loudly, but the Doctor clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Could we talk about this somewhere where an entire institute of people who want me captured and/or killed aren't listening in?" the Doctor asked impatiently. Jack nodded since his mouth was covered by the Doctor's hand.

The Doctor released Jack and allowed the man to lead him and Amy through the institute. As they walked, several people stared openly at the Doctor. Some pointed rather indiscreetly, others whispered to their friends, and others ran to their monitors to check for any memos they may have missed about this event. Clearly the Doctor was well-known, though not necessarily under the best of terms. Superior agents scolded those who stared and prodded them to get back to work.

Rory looked particularly in awe. He was much more easily impressed than the two Time Lords, having a human mind that had not thought about the possibilities of so much alien technology and an organization solely set aside to investigate their activities and technology. He gasped at several of the communication devices and weapons hanging off of soldiers' belts or resting passively on their desks.

Amy leaned into the Doctor's ear to whisper, "I'd love to hear the story of how you know them and what you did to make them mad." The Doctor gave a low monosyllabic laugh as if recalling a memory.

"It's a good one," the Doctor muttered back. He then turned his attention back to Jack who had led them to a secluded room that required high security clearance to enter. Jack provided the necessary identification before entering with Amy, Rory, and the Doctor and sealing the door behind them. Inside the room was a simple long table with chairs and a projector screen at the front of the room.

"So?" Jack prompted the Doctor, referring to his last comment about Amy being a Time Lord. The Doctor sighed and sat down in one of the chairs, delighted to find it spun around. He took a moment to spin as fast as he could around the spinning chair before responding to a very intrigued Jack.

"So, Amy's a Time Lord. You remember that hand I had, the one that got chopped off after I regenerated?" the Doctor asked. Jack gave him a blank expression. The Doctor then remembered that the world's memories of him had been adjusted, even erased in many cases. In fact, until just recently when Amy had seen the Doctor's display of a carved apple and fish fingers, no one remembered him at all. Except River. "Okay, that's a no. Doesn't matter. Anyway, I kept around my severed hand- oh, that's a bit weird isn't it?- and accidentally started a metacrisis when I rebooted the universe by throwing the Pandorica into my exploding TARDIS," the Doctor explained. The blank stare from Jack continued but had morphed into one with more confusion.

Rory looked sympathetic. "I don't get it either," Rory stated. Jack blinked once before returning to his usual nonchalant self.

"So you made a bunch of little Time Lord babies with part of yourself?" Jack summarized and reduced in complexity the situation that had the Doctor so stressed. Amy snorted and tried to pass it off as a laugh. Jack sat down across the table from the Doctor and leaned back in his chair, gesturing for Amy and Rory to join him in sitting. They did, Amy next to the Doctor and Rory, reluctantly, next to Jack.

"Babies? No. Humans became fully Time Lord since there was no singular Time Lord element left to return the backfire of the metacrisis and retain human traits," the Doctor spewed information that was generally disregarded by the humans in the room. The Doctor read their expressions and decided to move on with the conversation. "Right. So, how much do you know about me here?" the Doctor asked. He had to determine how much Torchwood retained in terms of intelligence on him.

"Well, you're a Time Lord, the last of them. That is, until now. And you fly through space and time in your blue box and you pissed off the Queen of England a couple centuries ago so she declared Torchwood to capture you and all alien technology that made its way to Earth," Jack summarized. The Doctor gave another whirl of his spinning chair, clearly entertained by it.

Torchwood's files on the Doctor still must be at least partially intact that meant, and after Amy brought him back to the world by remembering him, more data must have been recovered. But Jack's personal memories with the Doctor must have been limited to none.

"Hey, Doctor, why exactly are we here?" Rory asked. It was the same question Jack had been about to ask. The other three in the room looked to the Doctor for the answer.

"For help. There's about a hundred Time Lords roaming Earth in the 21st century, lost and alone and able to wreak havoc if they're left that way. I need you, Jack, to track them down using Torchwood's research and bring them here until I can take them to a new home planet that's safe for them," the Doctor answered. Jack found himself slowly nodding along with the Doctor, agreeing to help him before he was even finished.

"Sure thing, Doc. I might have some resistance up top from fundamentalists who're set against you, but I've got a good team," Jack said. He shot the Doctor a smile before continuing. "Are you gonna stay and help out?" The Doctor shook his head.

"I have to search for a new planet. We'll be going very soon, actually," the Doctor replied, looking toward the door. He was itching to get back to his TARDIS. He didn't very much like leaving her alone at Torchwood of all places. Rory shifted in his chair and stayed sitting while the other three stood.

"Uh, I think I want to stay. Here, I mean. Help out with finding the Time Lords on Earth. I don't know how fit I am for a Time Lord adventure," Rory said quietly, clearing his throat after speaking. The Doctor thought about it for a moment. He probably felt left out being the only human on the TARDIS, so that much made sense. Plus, he would be a real help at Torchwood to make sure they stayed in line. Regardless of the Doctor's occasional bickering with Rory in the previous reality, he trusted the man with a lot.

"Of course, Rory. You'll be brilliant," the Doctor said. He walked past Rory quickly before heading to the door and whispered, "Watch out for Jack, though. He's a devil." Rory looked quizzically at the Doctor but didn't say anything.

Amy said her goodbyes to Rory and gave him a tight hug before joining the Doctor as Jack opened the door and motioned for them to leave while he stayed behind with Rory. As soon as the Doctor and Amy had left the room, the Doctor turned to Amy.

"Are you sure you want to come with me? You could always stay," the Doctor asked her seriously. He looked at her closely, drinking in the fact that this was Amy, the same Amy he'd known for perhaps a year by then, but she had only known him for a day. It was so twisted and upside down, but it was real. Somehow, this was real.

"Yes," Amy responded. There was not a moment's hesitation in her reply. The Doctor knew that should worry him, but it didn't. He was elated, in fact, in spite of whatever else was going on. Amy Pond was agreeing to travel with him all over again, and that would never be something he could ever regret.

The Doctor took her hand in his own and made his way toward the TARDIS, past all of the curious soldiers. One particularly brazen young man dared to lift a camera to take the Doctor's picture, so the Doctor gave him his cheesiest grin. "If they're going to have a picture to remember me by, may as well make it a good one," the Doctor told Amy, causing her to smile and roll her eyes at him.

Once they'd reached the TARDIS, the Doctor opened the door and gestured for Amy to entered. He then followed suit, giving one last look out of his blue doors. The woman from earlier that had led the soldiers who'd viciously surrounded his TARDIS was walking toward him, fast, with a determined look on her face. She was followed by, again, grunts with guns.

"Doctor!" the woman growled. The Doctor wiggled his fingers at her as a wave goodbye and closed the door, rushing to the console. He set his TARDIS for flight, but as he dematerialized, he could still hear the woman yelling. "Doctor! No! Wait, you-!" and the rest of her harsh words were cut off as the Doctor's blue box flew away into time and space.

***DW*DW*DW***

"Where are we going now?" Amy asked with excitement. She leaned against the console next to the Doctor, pushing some blue buttons. The Doctor smacked her hand hands away.

"No touching," he scolded her. Amy put her hands up in false surrender, but it was clear she would continue touching the console at a later point. "We are off to explore the galaxies, looking for a planet habitable enough for Time Lords to live," the Doctor answered Amy's question. He inserted some more information into his scanner before landing the TARDIS with her usual noises.

Amy approached the door followed by the Doctor, who opened it and showed off what lay beyond. "Adipose 3! This is Breeding Planet 1 of the Adipose, lovely creatures. This planet was actually stolen once, and they had a resourceful plan for coming to Earth and colonizing it as a new breeding planet. Didn't work out so well. Their Matron broke a few laws in the process. But, in general, the Adipose are quite good at inhabiting new planets and continuing their race," the Doctor described.

The planet appeared to Amy as if it was one giant bounce house. Everything in sight looked squishy, as if it was made of blow-up balloons or foam. Even the ground had a certain spongeyness to it that made one feel as though they could bounce on it. Amy looked out to see the most ridiculous and adorable creatures roaming about with beady black eyes and blubber-like white bodies. They ranged in size from larger than humans to small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

"They're so cute!" Amy exclaimed. One of the smaller Adipose accidentally ran into Amy's leg and fell over, so she leaned down to help it back on its feet. The little Adipose made a small noise of thanking before waddling off to join the others.

"Yes, and they're generally fairly harmless. We're here so I can talk to the council that I know will be meeting here about the need for a relocation. Adipose 3 is becoming overcrowded and these guys will need a new planet to expand to soon. We should be able to find out what planets in the area have been determined habitable for life if we drop by," the Doctor said cheerfully. He started off down the bouncy path that led toward the center of the action, bumping into some of the larger Adipose along the way.

"And you were invited?" Amy asked with some surprise. The Doctor smirked a little, pulling out his psychic paper.

"I'm the Doctor. I'm invited to _every_ party," he scoffed.

**A/N: So it's off to explore planets in search of a home for Amy and the Doctor while Rory and Jack start a search for more Time Lords on Earth. This is not the last of Jack or Rory, as I will show parts of the story from their vantage points as well.**

**Let me know if anything so far has been too confusing or anything, and I will try to clarify. And if there's any other comments/advice you have, feel free to let me know!**


	8. Fat Can Kill

**A/N: Read, enjoy, review.**

The Doctor walked up to the front gates with Amy and approached the two guards. They were larger Adipose, still fluffy and innocent in appearance, but they had attempted to look more menacing by wearing what looked quite similar to Viking war helmets. Amy had to try very hard to keep from sniggering.

"Hello, I'm an expert on humans, a doctor, and I'm here for the meeting," the Doctor said, flashing his psychic paper at the two Adipose. The guards merely blinked at the Doctor and waved him in.

Beyond the gates was a sort of castle, if the castle was designed by a child who loved bouncy houses. There were bright colors everywhere, on the walls as paint, in portraits, on clothing, everything. And the walls seemed so soft they could be made out of marshmallows. Milling about the large castle-like room were several Adipose, large and small, as well as some humanoid figures. Just as the Doctor and Amy were observing the room, a blonde woman called the room to order. Everyone in the room, Adipose and humanoid alike, settled down and became quiet.

"As you all know, Adipose 3 is becoming overcrowded. We have been looking into integration techniques and locations around surrounding galaxies and have found Earth to be a viable candidate. We have brought back a few humans to tell us information as well as give us a basis for comparison so disguises could be formed. Earth, so our experts tell us, is full of enough obese people to properly reproduce our race, and these humans will not suspect a thing," the woman stated in a clean and clipped voice. There was something somewhat like applause from the Adipose in the room- the fluffy creatures hit their hands against their bodies instead of their other hand to make the noise though.

"Wait, what's she saying?" Amy whispered to the Doctor. He was preoccupied with listening to the blonde woman talk about the formulation of a chemical disguised as a diet pill to pay much attention to Amy. So the ginger jabbed the Doctor in his side. He winced in pain and looked at her.

"What?" he hissed, clearly wanting to pay attention to the outcomes of the assembly rather than be jabbed by Amy.

"What's she talking about? And who is she?" Amy asked in a whisper. The Doctor turned his eyes back to the blonde woman but answered Amy's question.

"Her name's Matron Cofelia, or at least that's how I was introduced, and she's a sort of intergalactic nanny for the Adipose. She's in charge of making sure their breeding cycles go according to plan," the Doctor explained while keeping his eyes trained on Cofelia. The woman had moved on to talk about the cost of their plans and the seven steps she planned on taking in order to achieve her goals. Occasionally the Adipose would clap when she said something particularly vital to the plan.

"She's not human, is she?" Amy asked, but she didn't need an answer. The Doctor shook his head. Amy thought back to what Cofelia had said about capturing humans to get a reference for a disguise. The other humanoid beings in the room, Amy began to realize, were like Cofelia- not human at all, but transformed Adipose. Amy made a noise in the back of her throat. "She'd be much better as one of the little fat things," Amy grumbled. The Doctor held back a smile. Cofelia was getting near the climax of her speech.

"So we look to give Earth the honor of becoming a new temporary home for our race, the Adipose!" Cofelia said with a triumphant end. At this point, the Adipose clapped louder than ever, and some of them even made cooing noises that almost sounded like babies. Amy was not nearly as convinced. She looked to see the Doctor's face for what his take on this was, but he was already moving away from the jubilant crowds and toward a door off to the side of the room. "What are you doing?" Amy asked as she caught up with him.

"Leaving. We've missed the good part, where they talk about alternatives to Earth, but there still should be some documents in storage about that," the Doctor answered simply. Amy gave him a look like he was nuts.

"What? Aren't you going to stop that woman- Adipose- whatever? She's talking about taking over _Earth_!" Amy exclaimed. The Doctor heard the passion in her voice and wished he could respond with the answer she was looking for. He wished he could show off and be a hero, but now wasn't the time. Instead, he opened the door at the side of the room with his sonic while everyone else was occupied with the celebration of Cofelia's speech. When he reached out his hand to turn the doorknob however, Amy caught his hand in her own.

"This is Earth we're talking about. Earth, where there's a hundred new Time Lords waiting, and where Rory and Jack are, finding them. You're not going to save them?" Amy inquired, her eyes intense with what looked like flames. The Doctor's mind spun out in many directions, knowing how it must appear for Amy.

She had not lived as long as he had; she had not yet begun to truly understand how time worked and how traveling through its murky waters could possibly function. It was his job to be her guide at this time, as she struggled with what could and could not happen. And it was, the Doctor knew, only foreshadowing of how difficult this would be to explain to all the other Time Lords back on Earth. He gently grasped her hand with his other and removed it from the doorknob so that he could twist the handle open.

"I will save them. I have saved them. It's a complicated thing," the Doctor sighed. Amy looked at him with eyes desperate to understand. "Help me look through these documents, and while we're looking, I'll explain. We're looking for information on planets, besides Earth, that the Adipose were looking into inhabiting," the Doctor made a deal. Amy agreed wordlessly and followed the Doctor into the dull storeroom.

Inside, there were stacks of cardboard boxes stuffed with an assortment of documents. The Doctor started tearing through the boxes and skimming the papers, looking for any useful information, so Amy joined in, opening a box.

"So tell me," Amy said. And the Doctor did. He told her how, in his previous regeneration, he'd investigated a diet pill called Adipose where people lost exactly a pound a day. He told her how he'd met up with Donna there, another previous companion, and they'd figured out the Adipose scandal together. Hearing about Donna didn't make Amy jealous, but it made her long to know the Doctor as well as that woman had, as well as the human version of herself had known the enigmatic man.

As the Doctor spoke, the two Time Lords tore through the Adipose documents, sometimes interrupting the Doctor's story with comments about information they'd found about other planets. After maybe a half an hour, they'd assimilated a decent stack of papers about other possible inhabitable planets to bring back to the TARDIS. The Doctor pressed his ear against the door to the storeroom, listening for any activity on the other side.

"I think they've all gone," the Doctor quietly informed Amy. She watched as the Doctor opened the door a crack and then swung it all the way open. "Great! We're all clear!" the Doctor exclaimed with joy. Then there was a series of clicks and a familiar blonde woman walked out from behind the door with two armed humanoids.

"Who are you?" Cofelia asked in her sharp tone. The Doctor pulled at his collar nervously. He had to think of something, because Cofelia would meet him later on, and she could not know that she'd already met him once before.

"Hello, my name is Troy Handsome of International Rescue. Please state the nature of your emergency," the Doctor tried. Cofelia narrowed her eyes at him. Her two armed humanoid guards hoisted their guns even more threateningly at him. "Right then… I'm guessing you didn't make the call?" the Doctor said. Cofelia did not look convinced, or even amused.

"Okay, so I must have landed on the wrong planet. Again. So sorry, I'll just be leaving then!" the Doctor apologized. He took two steps backward, slowly, but the guns stayed trained on him and Amy. "Or… not. Do you fancy a chat?" the Doctor asked pleasantly. His mind was already working on a way out of this, but none of his options seemed very appealing. He also had Amy to worry about. She was currently staying quiet, as she should, and presumably waiting for the Doctor to think of a plan.

"No, I _fancy_ knowing who you are and what you were doing in out storeroom," the Matron growled. The Doctor swallowed and started finalizing his first motion to start his escape in his head, but then, something else entirely happened. "Something else" happened to come in the form of Amy charging the guards and knocking the guns out of their hands. She picked both guns up and pointed them at Cofelia and her two goonies.

"Now, you're going to let us go, and you're going to pretend we were never here. Am I clear?" Amy commanded calmly, though she was breathing heavily from the adrenaline that came from rushing two men with guns without much of a plan beyond that. The Doctor didn't know if he wanted to scold her or hug her. There was no denying that it was extremely attractive to see Amy Pond barrel over two armed guards to save the day. Cofelia looked utterly shocked.

"Wh-what?" she stuttered, unable to comprehend the situation. Amy gestured with a motion of her head at the two guns in her hands. The guards moaned on the ground and held their various bruised body parts.

"I said, you're going to let us go. End of story. This never happened," Amy said forcefully. Cofelia said nothing. Amy and the Doctor backed out of the room, all the while Amy pointed the guns at the three humanoid Adipose. Once the pair reached the front doors, Amy dropped the guns on the floor and ran out the door, not stopping until she and the Doctor were in the TARDIS in mid-flight, laughing.

"That… was absolutely… brilliant!" the Doctor managed to say through his laughter. He didn't quite know why they were laughing- it probably had to do with adrenaline and the sense of adventure and the fact that Amy had just overtaken two muscular guards. Amy's eyes glistened with her cheer as the Doctor set his box flying through space and sat down to examine the documents they'd obtained when breaking into the Adipose storeroom.

They were off on adventures, Amy Pond and the Doctor, two Time Lords, flying through space and time, laughing their way along. For the first time in this reality, the Doctor felt that everything could turn out alright.

***DW*DW*DW***

While Amy and the Doctor were off investigating Adipose 3, Jack and Rory were back on Earth preparing a Torchwood unit to search the Earth for Time Lords. Jack had assembled his team in the same room Rory, Amy, and the Doctor had talked in the day before.

"So, Rory, we'll need any sort of signs you know for us to be looking for. What kinds of things will let us know we've found a Time Lord? They aren't exactly all going to be flying around in blue boxes, are they?" Jack inquired. Rory raised his eyebrows. In the meeting thus far, Jack had done most of the talking. In fact, beyond Rory introducing himself, he hadn't really been a part of the discussion at all. All of the agents in the room looked expectantly at Rory. He knew he had to say something intelligent.

"Uh…" he uttered. A soldier in the back of the room snickered. This was not a good way to start out. Rory shifted uncomfortably, feeling as though the room had suddenly gotten warmer. There were maybe thirty men and women in the room, and each set of eyes was staring right at him. "You know, Time Lords regenerate and stuff," Rory continued, his voice too quiet he knew. He'd never been very good at public speaking- it was always his worst grades in school.

"Goldmine of information, this one," another soldier mocked. Jack's head swiveled toward the offending soldier and gave him a glare.

"Let the man talk," Jack scolded. The solider didn't say another snide comment.

"So, yeah, they regenerate. But when they regenerate, it's like liquid fire comes out of them, bursting from their bodies. And every part of them changes into someone completely new. Then there's the fact that they all want to travel in space and time. And they've all got massive brains," Rory started to feel more comfortable the more he talked. "So we should probably look into some of the high-level science programs, especially any to do with astronauts or time travel studies. Plus there's the fact that they've got two hearts. It should be easy enough to tell that one. We should set up teams- some to look into science programs, some to set up tests for an extra heart, and some to look into internet posts for anything about regeneration," Rory found himself actually giving what could be taken as orders and, even more surprisingly, many of the agents were nodding along as he gave them. Jack clapped him on the back.

"We'll make the Doctor proud and bring all his Time Lords home safe," Jack concluded.

**A/N: The Doctor and Amy are traveling looking for new planet while Jack and Rory stay at the home front, searching Earth for Time Lords. The next chapter should include more to do with the Doctor's reaction to events as well as how the operations are running on Earth.**

**Also: the Earth timeline will not always match up exactly in length of time with the Doctor and Amy's timeline because they are, of course, traveling in time. I hope to make this as clear as possible throughout the story.**


	9. Blank Piece of Sky

**A/N: This has some deeper stuff inside, really getting into the story. Enjoy!**

Amy and the Doctor were sprawled out on the TARDIS floor with papers scattered in what had once began as neatly organized piles. The two were lying on their backs, their heads close to one another, reading through a paper, then throwing it to the mass of others, discarded in a similar manner.

The Doctor started mumbling the words under his breath as he read along with the sheet of paper he was reading. "There have been some sightings of water, but it appears to only exist in a frozen form, perhaps due to the temperatures never rising above -100 K… nah, that's rubbish." Then he would pick up a new one.

"Oh! This one doesn't sound too bad," Amy said, lifting a document up and over her head to put it in front of the Doctor's head. Unfortunately, since she couldn't exactly see him front where she was lying down, she ended up hitting him in the face with the paper. The Doctor snatched it from her hands, if only to insure he wouldn't receive any paper cuts on his face.

He scanned the document: "_Water supply is neutral… warring clans slowly eliminated each other… oxygen to nitrogen ratio at 20.8 to 78.08… binary solar system…_" After five minutes of scanning the words, he jumped to his feet with incredible speed for a 907 year old man.

"Well, Pond, you may have found us a winner!" the Doctor said with excitement. "Even the name sounds like a winner!" he added. Amy scrutinized the paper for the name, not realizing it actually had been listed. When she found the planet's name, she realized that she must have simply skimmed over it.

"052293A? That's a winning name?" she asked skeptically. The Doctor shrugged.

"It's as good as any other. Anyway, we can rename it- anything you'd like," the Doctor said, emphasizing the last three words with just a slight pause between them. He gave her a smile, that infectious smile he so often gave, the one Amy would bet no one could truly resist. The Doctor reached out and took hold of Amy's head, kissing her on the forehead, just like he had always done. Well, used to do. "That is, if 052293A is actually going to work for us," the Doctor added on.

Amy continued grinning at the Doctor as he studied the document for coordinates to the planet. With a whirring noise, the TARDIS dematerialized and rematerialized on the planet Amy had discovered in one of the stolen documents. The Doctor could tell she was thrilled with everything, so happy to be traveling, but he noticed something else in the way she held herself- she was still tired from her regeneration. She might try to hide it with excitement, but the Doctor could tell those sorts of things.

"Amy… you need to get some rest," the Doctor spoke softly. Amy's smile faded and was replaced by a stubborn pout.

"No," Amy countered. The Doctor let out a long breath. She could certainly be a difficult one. "There's a planet out there, Doctor, a planet that we might live on!" she added to her argument. But the Doctor wouldn't have any of it.

"Bed. Now," the Doctor said firmly. He chose to use as few words as possible so she couldn't twist his words. She was good at that. Amy pouted some more.

"I have to go to bed now, all alone?" Amy asked. The Doctor was trying hard not to look at her face. It was difficult to say no to her, especially with that face she was making.

"Yes, alone. Do you need a stuffed animal to keep you company?" the Doctor suggested sardonically. He had meant to make the comment demeaning by comparing her to a child, and he thought he'd done a rather good job at that. Unfortunately for the Doctor, Amy could turn any sentence around.

"That's not exactly what I had in mind," Amy said, her pout turning upward slightly into a smirk. The Doctor wanted to smack his hand against his head. Hadn't he told himself to use as few words as possible? Well, so much for that plan. Amy could turn almost any sentence into one to make the Doctor feel uncomfortable. He had almost forgotten. The Doctor cleared his throat, ridding his mind of the thoughts Amy was trying to put in his head and pointed his finger in the general direction of where Amy's room was.

"Now," the Doctor commanded. There, back to short sentences. That was much better. Amy's pout returned, mixed with a little hint of a glare, but she retreated nonetheless. The Time Lord shook his head in disbelief and rested his palms on his console. He stayed like that for a few minutes, distracting his mind with anything that didn't include saving Time Lords or ginger hair.

_The tangent line to the generic flight of the TARDIS follows the antidifferentiation of the layers of space superimposed over the values of the input functions of time… after twenty hours, one's mind can possibly subjugate to hallucinations due to the temporal miscommunication caused by undertone scents of some kinds… physics can be inverted if one travels to the neverspace created by a black hole… one subspecies of semiaquatic horses in the Tyr galaxie have fingers as long as metre sticks… fish fingers and custard… Amy…_

And so his mind was back where it started. He gave up then trying to occupy his brain and entered coordinates at random, just to get out of his own head. With a shudder, the TARDIS landed. It was a small shudder, but it still indicated that something had not gone quite according to plan. The Doctor checked the scanner to see that he had not landed at all- he was floating through space. He walked to the door and opened it cautiously. Outside, he saw nothing of interest at first. But then he notices something- in this sort of a solar system, there should be another planet of the inner orbital rings. A thought came to his large mind and he rushed back to the scanner to check. He was right. His TARDIS was floating in space right above where Gallifrey had once been.

The Doctor slowly returned to the TARDIS doors and sat down, his legs dangling over the edge. It had been a long time since he'd seen this place. He had not put in the coordinates for this place, but his ship sometimes took him places he didn't want to go. She had a mind of her own, quite literally, and she must have thought he needed to come here.

He didn't quite know why she'd brought him here, but there it was- an empty expanse in the sky where a brilliant planet filled with red used to reside. Maybe that was the reason he'd always wanted red hair- to symbolize Gallifrey. But no, he knew better than that. His mother had red hair in the earliest regeneration of hers he remembered.

Maybe he'd been brought to this place to remind him that Time Lords again could roam the universe like they once did. Well, that is, if he managed to get some sort of transportation for the Time Lords. Wouldn't that be brilliant? Maybe hundreds of Time Lords eventually, roaming the galaxies. The Doctor's bright thoughts touched with nostalgia were weighed down by just how much he needed to do. These people would need a home planet where they could live together as a community and work on creating modes for time travel. And they would need some sort of government. The Doctor had the weight of the race he'd reinstated on his shoulders. It was rather like suddenly becoming a father to hundreds of screaming babies who had no idea how to navigate their new world.

He had others, finally wasn't alone, but he alone had the responsibility of keeping his race alive. It was like the Time War all over again. Except this time, no one would die. And he wasn't truly alone in this responsibility. He had Amy. And Rory and Jack. Oh, Rory, he was so human, but he'd wanted so badly to help the Doctor along with Jack. The Doctor's mood was lifted as he thought about this and the analogy he'd thought about, comparing all the Time Lords to screaming newborns and Amy, Jack, and Rory. He was almost a father again. He was the father, and there was a mother, and two awkward uncles. The Doctor chuckled as he thought about that.

The Doctor felt a hand softly rest on his shoulder. Without looking around, he knew it was Amy, awake when he told her not to be.

"What are you doing awake?" the Doctor asked. He knew it was a pointless question, but it gave him something to say.

"I heard you laughing. And did you know you mumble a lot when you think? You said something about me being a mother," Amy said, her eyebrows raised, waiting for an explanation. The Doctor swallowed, realizing that would sound odd if Amy only caught that part. He scrambled to think of what to say. "I mean… you… and I…" the Doctor stuttered. Amy's eyebrows shot even further toward her hairline.

"You and I what?" Amy asked. The Doctor gulped. This was not the sort of conversation that he could show off his enormous intellect and skill, no, this was one of the ones that left him stuttering and scrambling for words.

"Time Lords. There's… more of them now," the Doctor tried to recover but only succeeded in making Amy start to laugh.

"And, what? You want to make even more?" Amy suggested. The Doctor shook his head vigorously. That was most certainly not what he'd meant. Amy rolled her eyes. "Okay, I'm going to just pretend this never happened," Amy said to console the Doctor. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He knew his face was probably nearing shades of red.

"Why don't we go to bed?" the Doctor advised, feeling quite weary and glad he seemed to have dodged a bullet in that conversation since Amy so kindly offered to ignore it. But now Amy was laughing right out loud. He wondered why for a second before realizing his error. This was going from awkward to bad to worse. "Alone! I mean, separate!" he corrected himself hurriedly. Amy just waved at him as she left for her room once more, giggling the whole way there. The Doctor returned to his room and flopped down on his bed, staring up at his ceiling which he'd painted with stars and moons and planets.

"How do I get myself into these messes?" the Doctor asked himself. He received no answer.

***DW*DW*DW***

"Jack? Jack, can you hear me? I've got a possible Rome Dilt situation here," a voice came crackling through Jack's communicator. He pressed a button in order to reply.

"I've got you loud and clear, soldier. What have you got for me?" Jack responded into the device. Rory's ears caught the code phrase and he listened closer. The two of them were currently out investigating in the Amazon of all places. Some of the locals had legends of mysterious children born to the gods that could never die and could even change their souls. It sounded similar to tales of regeneration, so they'd decided to check it out. Unfortunately, that meant living in the same conditions the natives did in that section of the rainforest, meaning no indoor plumbing along with a significant lack of other amenities Rory was accustomed to.

"We've got a video stream, but it's unclear whether it was faked," the soldier said through Jack's communicator. Jack nodded even though the soldier couldn't see him, and then he turned to Rory, making sure the other man heard. Rory returned the nod.

"Alright, get a copy and then send the tech guys the link so they can take it down. We don't want anyone panicking around the world," Jack commanded. The soldier agreed and signed off the radio device.

This was a life Rory had never expected for himself, but he wasn't regretting his choice at all. Well, there were some moments he second guessed his new career. Okay, triple guessed even. Moments when he had to relieve himself in areas he normally wouldn't want to walk within a thirty foot radius of, or when he and the team searched down yet another fruitless lead, or when Jack's flirting became annoying. Those were the moments when Rory would consider, for just a moment, going back home. But he always came to the same conclusion- he'd put almost half a year into this work so far, and he wasn't going to give up now.

"Okay, handsome, you ready to interrogate some of the locals?" Jack asked. Rory resisted the urge to roll his eyes or tell Jack off for flirting with him. He had learned that the best way to deal with Jack sometimes was to ignore him.

"Sure. Um, I don't really know how to speak… whatever Amazon people speak," Rory pointed out. Jack shrugged.

"Neither do I! That makes it more fun," Jack said with a wink. The urge to react welled up inside Rory, but he pushed his irritation down. He had always been quite good at that, and six months of living with Jack had increased his patience even more. "Have you tried pictionary with them? I've found it to be great," Jack suggested. Rory raised his eyebrows at the man and turned his back, deciding he'd rather deal with the Amazon people that couldn't speak English than Jack when he was being an annoyance.

"Oh, come on, get a sense of humor," Jack sighed, following after Rory.

"I had one, but I think you killed it," Rory retorted. He was still annoyed, but he felt rather proud of himself for coming up with that one. Jack laughed at him and the two joined the tribe of Amazon natives; they were participating in a dance with drums made of animal skins. It was sort of beautiful in a way that didn't make very much sense but still conveyed powerful emotions.

Rory wondered how they were supposed to keep going like this. The first batch of Time Lords had been easy- there was a whole blog on the internet with about seven hundred followers, 32 of which happened to all be genuine Time Lords. After that great success earlier on, findings had become few and far between. The metacrisis event did not seem to be localized in any sort of way.

Other things were hard too, besides the job and working with Jack. He missed Amy, missed his old life. He desperately wanted to see her. Growing up, they'd seen each other almost every day. Now he hadn't seen her in six months when she'd gone off with the Doctor to find a home planet for all the Time Lords Rory and Jack were finding with Torchwood. Rory missed the normalcy of having a steady life, friends, job, and home. It wasn't easy, but he wouldn't give it up. Sure, as a nurse he'd been able to help some people, but now he was helping an entire race survive. Nothing could ever come close to that.

He'd grown a lot as a man, becoming much more adventurous and used to sudden surprises. Half a year ago, Rory knew he could barely stand up for himself. Now he was getting training in how to handle weapons like Jack's sonic blaster (which he would never tell the Doctor about). And, staring at the natives dancing in to unfamiliar melodies and singing in a language he didn't know, Rory knew they would find the Time Lords. Torchwood would find them and bring them home, to a new home, and he would again see his best friend and the Founder of the Time Lords, as the Doctor was sometimes now called.

**A/N: Just in case you didn't pick it up- Rome Dilt is an anagram of Time Lord. Also, I know there was a lot of more introspective stuff in this one, but there will be more adventures to come! Another thing, I wanted to say again that Rory and Jack's timeline doesn't match up evenly with the Doctor's and Amy's since the latter two are traveling in time. And if there are any details that have been changed in backstories and such, remember that this is an AU.**

**Let me know what you thought- review!**


	10. En el Paraíso

**A/N: Alright, so it's off to visit new planets! Read, enjoy, review.**

"Amy, this is it! This is 052293A, the planet that very well may soon play host to a hundred Time Lord!" the Doctor exclaimed, bursting open the TARDIS doors to reveal the planet. Amy looked out of the blue box, eager to finally see the planet. She was confused, however, to find that the TARDIS was perched on a very small island surrounded by a seemingly never-ending ocean. The island was about as large as a classroom and made up of small pebbles and sand mixed together. The water looked even less inviting- there were whirlpools scattered like spots, some as small as a human hand and some as large as a house.

"Um, Doctor?" Amy asked tentatively. The Doctor looked disappointed. "This is 052293A? The new home of the Time Lords?" She looked around more at the depressing excuse for a planet. If Amy was expecting some sort of glorious paradise with signs all over reading "Welcome Time Lords," she'd been wrong.

"Oh, well that's anticlimactic," the Doctor sighed. He stepped out onto the small island and observed the turbulent waters. He focused on one of the midsized whirlpools close to where the TARDIS had landed. "This is rubbish. There was nothing about it being taken over completely by the seas in the brochure. I wouldn't have come if there had been. Really, it's false advertising. I'd suggest we sue the writers, but considering they already want us dead for stealing their documents…" the Doctor trailed off, pulling his sonic out of his jacket and pointing it at the whirlpool he was inspecting.

"What is it?" Amy inquired. The Doctor was looking down at his sonic with great interest. "Oh no. You've got that look," Amy groaned. He was interested in something. And Amy had an idea that when the Doctor got interested in something, he wanted to know much more about it.

"What look?" The Doctor kept his face innocent.

"The, 'I've found something interesting, and by interesting I mean extremely dangerous' look," Amy answered in an annoyed voice. "I hate that look," she added under her breath.

"Nonsense. This is how I always look," the Doctor brushed off her comment.

"My point exactly," Amy grumbled. The Doctor smiled, not caring if Amy was put off by this. He'd noticed something, and he couldn't very well let it go. That wasn't in his nature.

"Those whirlpools. Which direction are they spinning?" the Doctor asked. Amy shrugged, not particularly interested. But the Doctor stared at her intently, awaiting her reply.

"Counterclockwise. Does it matter, the direction?" Amy responded. The Doctor nodded toward the nearest whirlpool again before bending down to pick up a pebble and throwing it into the swirling water. Predictably, the pebble zoomed around in a circular motion, in tighter and tighter circles until it sunk. "Okay, that was lovely, but what was that supposed to prove?" Amy sighed.

"If the whirlpools are spinning counterclockwise, then why did the pebble go clockwise?" the Doctor proposed. Amy's mouth opened slightly. She hadn't even noticed that as she'd watched the pebble sink down. How had she not noticed? Well, it probably had something to do with the fact that she wanted to get off this planet and out into space where they could find an actual viable home planet instead of a waterlogged physics-defying world.

The Doctor crouched down, getting closer to eyelevel with the whirlpool. He tossed another pebble and watched as it sunk through the vortex against the apparent current.

"Please tell me this doesn't mean we're sticking around to find out why this is happening?" Amy asked. She already knew the answer, but she was hoping to be wrong just this once.

"We're sticking around to find out why," the Doctor confirmed to Amy's annoyance. Amy shook her head while rolling her eyes to convey the extent of her irritation, but the Doctor paid her no attention; he was much too busy getting ever closer to the whirlpool. He was so close that, for a fraction of a second, Amy contemplated shoving him in there. Before the thought had even finished in the redhead's mind however, the Doctor had already dipped a finger into the ocean at what appeared to be a safe distance from the swirling vortex.

"Whoa!" the Doctor exclaimed as he was dragged into the current.

"Doctor!" Amy screamed. The Doctor was kicking in the water, desperately trying to grasp onto the shoreline. Amy thrust out her hand to catch one of the Doctor's flailing arms, but he was already out of reach. "Doctor, grab my hand!" Amy yelled frantically. He was breathing in gulps of water now, circling closer and closer to the center. Amy watched as a flash of his arm appeared for a moment, and then he was gone.

Amy fell to the ground, not able to believe what just happened. The Doctor had dipped a finger, just a finger, into the water, and then he'd been sucked into a whirlpool and disappeared. This was not good. How could that have happened? Her mind was beginning to work faster than it ever had, as fast as what she imagined the Doctor's mind must go sometimes. _Think, Amy, what are you supposed to do now? What would the Doctor do?_ Well, that was an easy one. Amy repositioned herself into a crouching position, not wasting any time at all. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, preparing herself to do exactly what the Doctor would do.

"Geronimo!" Amy shrieked, springing from her crouched position and jumping straight into the whirlpool.

***DW*DW*DW***

Amy felt the water rushing all around her, but she didn't try to fight it. She stayed calm, knowing that she was going after the Doctor. And, in the calm, Amy realized that she couldn't really feel the water much anymore. Her body felt as though it was falling, drifting slowly through a deep blue similar to the ocean but much less… wet.

_Where am I? _Amy thought, but she had no answer. She cautiously opened her eyes, finding that the water did not sting her eyes in the least. Actually, it didn't even feel like water at all. So she tried taking a breath. Oxygen flooded her lungs. Having oxygen and sight, Amy was then able to focus on her surroundings.

At first, there was nothing. Just blue, deep deep blue, for miles and miles. Or was it nothing at all? The same blue seemed to stretch on and on, never stopping for as far as she could see. Amy turned her head around, then her whole body, trying to find some indicator that she was even falling at all besides the feeling in her gut. She came up empty. Where was the Doctor? Had he fallen through this odd blue world under the whirlpool like she had? If so, then why couldn't Amy see him?

And then there was a light, a simple white light, fairly dim. But it stood out amongst the blue when there was nothing else. Amy tried moving toward it, unsure whether she should walk or swim. She wasn't really in liquid or on solid land or flying through air. It was actually rather disconcerting to not be in any consistent form of matter, but Amy, being the persistent woman she was, pushed through with a strange combination of walking and swimming. As she got closer and closer to the white light, she felt a question nagging at the back of her mind. _Where do you want to go?_ She didn't know where that question came from. It wasn't her own thought, no, it seemed foreign. Like someone or something else had planted it there. But it also didn't seem like a malicious someone or something. Just a simple question. So Amy answered in her mind- _I want to go where the Doctor is._

The white light grew. It was slow at first, growing to be twice as large after a few seconds. But then it started growing much more rapidly. Three times larger. Ten. A hundred. And then the white light overtook the blue completely, and Amy lost consciousness.

***DW*DW*DW***

The entire Amazon expedition had been another bust. The legends had apparently been brought to the Amazon people by European travelers, missionaries, as a matter of fact. Rory was feeling a bit put out by the whole thing and seriously considering asking Jack how many vacation days he got as an honorary member of Torchwood.

"Hello, handsome. Ryan's out sick again today, so we're one down on the call team. Fancy filling in for him?" Jack poked his head in Rory's room and asked. They were back at base at the Torchwood institute for a few days, cataloguing all of the evidence from the Amazon. Not that there was much to catalogue.

"Why not? It'll get me out of the planning meeting," Rory replied. He hated planning meetings. People always expected him to be brimming with ideas in planning meetings because he had traveled with the Doctor. To be honest, Rory would much rather just be an average soldier that followed orders and went wherever the team did. It would be much easier than being held responsible in part when the team came up empty.

Jack left and returned to his own duties, most likely preparing for the very meeting Rory was getting out of. Rory left his temporary room, which doubled as his office, and turned out of the door for the call center. The tech team for the Time Lord search and rescue project had their own wing of the tech center, including several computers and telephone lines. The call center was usually considered one of the worst posts for a soldier considering it didn't involve any action. Basically it consisted of answering phones all day like a secretary and forwarding any calls that may hold any actual importance to the higher ups. Very few legitimate tips came in through the call center, but it was kept open on the off chance that something might show up.

Rory nodded and smiled politely at a few agents he passed on his way to the call center. He'd made a few friends at the agency, but he hadn't gotten close to anyone. There was Jack, and he was the closest Rory had to a best friend now. Though Jack could annoy Rory better than anyone he'd ever met, the man always had Rory's back. Rory knew he could trust that man until the end of time. But still, no one measured up to Amy.

Once he'd sat down at one of the open call center desks, he kicked back and waited for the phone to ring. He didn't have long. The phone gave a shrill ring and Rory picked up the phone.

"Hello, this is the tip line for odd alien occurrences, can I help you?" Rory intoned dryly. He knew that wasn't exactly how he was supposed to answer the phone, but he didn't care. Rory also knew that people higher up could listen in on calls and reprimand him for speaking in such a way on the public line, but again, he didn't care. He was too valuable an asset for Torchwood to lose. So he may as well answer the phone however he liked.

"Yes, hello, I have seen alien activity. You see, my dog Tracie has been acting odd recently. She hasn't been eating her favorite food, bacon, and she hasn't even been playing nearly as much. She'd got this odd sort of birthmark that I've never noticed before, too. I think it's a mark from her being abducted by aliens," a distressed woman said from the other side of the line. Rory rolled his eyes. This was exactly why soldiers hated call center duty. Most tips were just like this- pointless and annoying.

"Alright ma'am, we'll report that," Rory said with a monotone. The woman thanked him and hung up. Less than thirty seconds later, the phone rang again. This time, apparently, a man's wife just _must _have had some sort of alien technology tried on her, because she was pregnant, and the man hadn't been in town for six months. Rory silently banged his head against the wall as he calmly told the man that his wife would be fine. And so the day went. Hours slowly slipped away as Rory watched the clock in between calls, waiting for his shift to be over. As his shift was coming to a close, Rory got another call.

"Hello, this is the alien tip hotline, what have you got?" Rory asked sarcastically. He was fed up with all of the crazies and paranoid people. He heard an uncertain cough as the man on the other end of the line cleared his throat.

"Hola- er- hello. I have information about a person who started glowing orange after a shooting from one of the cartels," the man said unsteadily in a clear Mexican accent. Rory sat up a little straighter. Glowing orange? That actually sounded like regeneration.

"Alright, sir, could you tell me who this person is?" Rory asked. He was ready to forward this call, but then remembered that, technically, he outranked anyone that he had the option to forward the call to. So he stayed on the line.

"It's me," the man said, coughing again. He sounded sick. Rory's attention was focused now. The man on the line had been shot by a drug cartel and was about to regenerate.

"Alright, calm down, this is all actually normal. You're going to experience a burning sensation followed by a change in appearance," Rory explained in a controlled voice, reciting the explanation as he'd heard it from one of the first 32 Time Lords the agency had acquired. The man's breathing was heavily labored. "Can you tell me your name? We'll send a team out there to help you. They should get there in a few hours."

"My name is Ricardo Martinez. I'm the president of Mexico," the man said. Rory's jaw dropped to the floor as the line disconnected. This was going to be one interesting acquisition.

**A/N: First of all, this chapter is dedicated to Kentastic72, who has read and kindly reviewed so much of my work and been such an encouragement. They have given me the idea to make a world leader a Time Lord, so I've included that twist. Thanks so much!**

**Next, I'd like to say that there are two very important storylines going on right now- the Doctor and Amy as well as Jack and Rory. These four will not stay separate for much longer. I hope anyone who's reading this is enjoying it. Let me know what you think. What you liked, didn't like, ect.**


	11. Monkeying Around

**A/N: Things never go as planned, do they? Read, enjoy, and review.**

Amy gasped and sat up with a start. Her eyes opened and she cautiously examined her surroundings. She took a moment to register what had happened. The Doctor had gotten sucked into a whirlpool. She'd jumped after him into a place of deep blue where a white light had taken over. She'd asked to go where the Doctor had, and now she was here. "Here" was relative, of course, so Amy took some hasty reconnaissance.

She was on what appeared to be a sort of indoor beach. There was sand and an ocean, but the entire area, though as large as three football fields, was enclosed by simple white walls. Amy noticed no people at first, but there were silver metallic robots that looked vaguely humanoid in shape whizzing about. Other than the robots and the walls, the scene around Amy appeared to be a completely normal beach, waves coming in gently toward the shore. One of the silver robots zoomed over to her. It had two eyes etched into the face area on the front as well as a screen where a mouth should be. The head was roughly the size and shape of a football.

"Greetings, visitor. Primitive scans indicate that you are healthy. Please remain still for a full scan," the robot intoned. With each word, the screen-mouth lit up. Then, a green light shot out of the mouth and scanned from Amy's head to her toes.

"Um, okay," Amy muttered. The robot backed up a few paces.

"Thank you. Please enjoy your stay at this pleasure resort brought to you by the T corporation and please do not touch the records," the robot said before joining the rest of the silver contraptions in whizzing around the room. Amy didn't know what to make of the silver robots or their scans, so she focused on looking for where the Doctor could be. Sure enough, she saw the Time Lord across the beach, chasing around one of the robots. Amy could tell even from a distance that the Doctor was trying to ask the robot questions.

"Doctor!" Amy yelled for his attention. The Doctor looked up and over to see his redheaded companion_._ Upon sighting her, he abandoned his chase of the robot and ran toward her, kicking up sand as he went. When he reached her, he took hold of her by the shoulders, gently shaking her as he jumped up and down. Amy started to smile and copy his motions.

"The whirlpools, they-" Amy started to say, but the Doctor cut her off quickly.

"Transported us to that deep blue color and-" the Doctor continued her sentence.

"The white light took over-" Amy jumped in.

"And took us here!" the Doctor finished the sentence quickly. The two laughed at how their thoughts had been so similar. The Doctor was unbelievably happy to see that his fellow Time Lord was alright. To show his excitement, he gave her a hasty hug before pulling back to talk more.

"So, about those robots…" the Doctor trailed off. Amy knew where he was going with this. It made him smile all over again that someone else finally had a brain that worked at the pace his did. It didn't matter that they'd gotten transported to a place possibly far away from where the TARDIS was, on a strange beach with strange silver robots crawling all over it. This was an adventure, and the Doctor couldn't resist. "It said scans showed I was healthy, but then it scanned me again," the Doctor continued. Amy nodded, conveying that the same had happened to her.

"Maybe some sort of system error?" Amy tried. The Doctor shrugged; he didn't know yet. He reached out for Amy's hand and she took his. The Doctor led Amy toward a possible exit to the beach that he'd noticed in the moments before Amy had appeared after entering the portal.

Toward one of the corners filled with sand there was a doorway that led to a long and winding metal corridor. There were no windows in the corridor, no decorations on the walls, nothing. It was a plain and simple hallway, lit with bright bulbs that seemed better fitted for a medical room than a simplistic corridor. After running down the metal corridor for a minute, it opened out into what appeared to be a gift shop of some kind. All around there were knick-knacks and seashells and t-shirts for sale. Everything in the shop had the same logo on it- a swirling whirlpool with a letter W in the middle of it. The gift shop was deserted except for a young woman with her face on the counter behind the check out register, who was presumably sleeping. And then, next to her, was a silver robot typing into a computer that sat next to the cash register.

"Excuse me, but where are we?" Amy asked the woman at the register politely. She snored once, but there was no other response. Amy poked her gently with one finger. Still nothing. "Okay..." Amy was at a loss to explain the complete lack of acknowledgement. The Doctor tried a different approach.

"Hello," the Doctor greeted the robot instead of the sleeping girl. "Sorry, but what do you need the scans for?" he asked. The robot swiveled its head toward the Doctor.

"Greetings, visitor. Scans are necessary to provide visual records," the robot replied in a monotone. Then the silver drone turned its head back to the computer.

"Visual records… and where do you keep these records?" the Doctor inquired. The robot again swiveled its head to face him.

"Greetings, visitor. Visual records are keep safe in storage," the robot droned. The Doctor stood contemplating for a moment before suddenly jumping over the counter and dashing through a service door behind the register.

"Well, come along, Pond!" the Doctor yelled. Amy, taken aback and not knowing what else to do, hopped over the desk despite the protestations of the robot.

"Greetings, visitor. Service rooms require top access clearance," the robot said in what was probably supposed to be distress, albeit in the same seemingly emotionless and mechanical tone. Instead, the flashes of light that would come from the scanner on its mouth area would flash more intensely, substituting for a stressed voice.

Amy disregarded the robot, following the Doctor into the service room and slammed the door behind her. Once she was inside, they ran through what appeared to be an over-crowded storage room until they reached the edge of the platform they were on. The entire storage room was filled with broken gifts from the shop and incorrect price tags- mostly just junk. The gray walls were simple and industrial, much like an old warehouse would be. The platform Amy and the Doctor were on started back at the service door and stopped right before an immediate drop-off point which over-looked a group of people.

"Doctor? What's going on? Where are we, and what are all these people doing in a service room?" Amy whispered, not wanting to draw attention from the crowd below.

The platform was only a few feet off the ground, where all the people had congregated. In fact, a short ladder led down to the ground just a few steps away. The Doctor held a finger to his mouth, telling Amy to be quiet. Amy obliged reluctantly and examined the group of people. They were all humans, or at least they appeared to be, and they were all varieties of age, gender, and race. There were probably about fifty of them total. But as Amy watched the people, she noticed that not one of them was moving.

The Doctor moved to the ladder and lowered himself down to the ground below. Amy followed suit. Once they had touched ground, they walked in front of the group of people, still silent. Amy found their lack of activity rather disconcerting; the people didn't move, didn't make a sound, didn't even blink. They simply stood in rows and stared forward. Amy gasped when she and the Doctor reached the end of the front row. Standing there were perfect copies of Amy and the Doctor.

"The robots weren't having a system error. The second scan was for visual records, and well, these are the records," the Doctor explained quietly, pointing first to the silent Amy and Doctor copies and then to the rest of the humans. Amy took a step closer to the copies of the two Time Lords.

"I'd date that," Amy said with appreciation. The Doctor rose his eyebrows, thinking just how inappropriate of a time it was for flirting.

"Oh, thanks," the Doctor replied awkwardly. Amy threw a withering look back at the real Doctor.

"I wasn't talking about _you._"

The Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes. Amy gave her copy an appreciative smile.

"Yes, lovely, now that we've established that you have much too high an opinion of yourself, I think we should find out why these robots have been programmed to make three-dimensional visual records of visitors," the Doctor said, trying to keep the exasperation from his voice. He resisted saying that most men in the world would probably agree with Amy's statement. Amy's ginger head would probably have popped from over-inflation if he had.

"Alright, fine. So why does it matter, the clone things?" Amy questioned. Just as the Doctor was about to explain that the whirlpool transportation coupled with the cloning records indicated a dormant race of very violent aliens, the lights in the storeroom flashed on and a troop of the silver robots from before entered along with members of the dormant race of very violent aliens the Doctor was going to tell Amy about.

"Amy, listen to me," the Doctor said quietly as the robots and aliens approached quickly, many of them carrying guns. The guns weren't terribly large, but they were no less frightening. The barrels tapered to a razor sharp steel point, giving the guns a nice deadly feature of doubling as knifes. "There's two options for what happens now. They might want to take more in depth scans of us," the Doctor whispered.

"What's the other option?" The Doctor hesitated for a moment.

"They decide they want to kill us immediately." Amy groaned. The aliens came closer and Amy realized that they looked very much like the chimpanzees she'd seen at the zoo before. With machine guns.

"Doctorrrr!" one of the chimp-aliens shrieked. The Doctor swallowed, knowing that couldn't be a good sign. Amy shot him a less-than-pleased glare. If the chimps didn't kill them, the Doctor feared Amy would once she had gotten out of this.

"Ah, yes, hello Thontrons! My friend and I were just admiring your lovely beautiful collection of visual human records for a moment," the Doctor scrambled for an explanation for why, exactly, two people had been snooping around these aliens' storerooms. One Thontron stepped out of the pack of robots and chimps, seemingly the leader.

"We know what you are, Doctor. You and your woman shall be subjected to scans of a higher caliber for more information. This begins immediately. You will comply or face execution," the Thontron said in a voice not so dissimilar to a howling monkey. If they weren't carrying powerful guns, Amy would have found the sight of them to be quite comical, especially when paired with the silver robots zooming aimlessly in and out of the crowd. Her thoughts along this path ended abruptly, however, when she caught the Doctor removing his shirt out of the corner of her eye.

"_What _are you doing?" Amy hissed. "This is not a time to strip!" The Doctor continued undressing, throwing his shirt and jacket to the floor.

"The scan requires you to be naked so that no material can hide any physical traits," the Doctor replied, shedding his pants. Amy felt a blush creeping up her neck, and part of her was glad that she was standing behind him at the moment. One of the silver robots came forward and produced a blue light that scanned the Doctor's body in full.

"Very well. The female next," the lead Thontron commanded. The Doctor backed up and began putting his clothes back on. Amy stepped forward and froze for a moment. She glanced indignantly back at the Doctor who, thankfully, had pants on by then.

"You need to do this," the Doctor whispered.

"What's going on?" Amy asked in return.

"Oh, just… take your clothes off," the Doctor hissed. Amy winked at him.

"Doctor, why didn't you ask sooner?" Amy said in a sarcastically flirtatious voice.

"Your life is at risk here, female," another Thontron called out. Amy cleared her throat and began undressing in what she deemed the most dignified way possible considering the circumstances. When she was finished, the blue light scanned her body much the same as it had the Doctor's. The moment the light faded, Amy rushed to put her clothes back on. She glanced back to see that the Doctor was still watching her.

"Enjoying the show?" Amy asked, smirking. The Doctor did not reply, instead turning away.

"Very well, Time Lords. You have provided us with the necessary data. You are free to go, but you are under no circumstances allowed ever again to visit our facilities," the lead Thontron growled. Amy reached out and grabbed the Doctor's arm, leading him briskly back up the ladder, through the storeroom, and back to the gift shop, leaving behind the swarm of robots and the chimp-like aliens. Once in the gift shop, Amy whirled on the Doctor.

"What just happened in there?" Amy asked, her voice giving off the illusion of calm. But the Doctor knew better. It was the calm in the eye of a hurricane. The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, knowing this wasn't going to be fun.

"You see, the Thontrons used to be, well still are for the most part, a relatively dormant race of particularly violent beings. Oddly enough, their one true passion, besides shooting people, is creating relaxation resorts like this indoor beach," the Doctor explained. He'd avoided quite a few things, but he was hoping he wouldn't have to get into all that.

"And the scan?" Amy asked, her voice reaching the "deadly" range. The Doctor backed up half of a step.

"They wanted to know what made me not human because… well… they've met me before when I… accidentally started a riot in one of their relaxation resorts?" the Doctor's explanation ended more like a question than a statement, desperately hoping that she would accept his reasoning and spare him the physical pain he feared was rapidly approaching. Amy's eyes narrowed into a concentrated glare.

"Take. Me. Back. To. The. TARDIS," Amy spoke each word separated from the next. "NOW."

"Yes ma'am!" the Doctor squeaked. The only problem was that he didn't know where the TARDIS was. They'd used a whirlpool portal to get to the resort, and he had no idea where the exit portal was. "Alright, now, I want you to remain calm, but I have no idea where the portal back to the island where we left the TARDIS is," the Doctor said slowly, already backing up away from Amy. She gave him a look that could have made a Dalek cry and took a deep breath before walking up to the whirlpool logo on the carpet in the middle of the gift shop. She stepped on it and vanished.

"Right then… whirlpool portal on the floor leads me to a very angry female Time Lord and my TARDIS. Here we go," the Doctor said to himself before stepping on the logo.

***DW*DW*DW***

Rory sat on a plane next to Jack on a flight to Mexico. Jack had been in total disbelief when Rory had told him that Ricardo Martinez, the president of Mexico, had called in to report his own regeneration.

"We'll need to set up fake accounts that he actually died in the shooting. His people would have no way of recognizing him after regeneration, anyway," Jack had started planning immediately as soon as he'd heard the news. Rory agreed, but he didn't really care about that part of the plan. What about the next president? A leader of a country isn't supposed to just regenerate and leave his country behind, telling them he's dead. In fact, leaders shouldn't be Time Lords at all. This acquisition was going to be much more involved than any other Torchwood had ever encountered.

Their conversation about work topics had quickly dried up, leaving Jack to his own devices, bored on a plane. That meant that he was giving the stewardess some looks Rory recognized quite well from the man.

"Hey, Jack, could you please stop hitting on the stewardess? I think she's actually a call girl," Rory reprimanded the agent. Jack looked hurt.

"You only say that because she flirted back." Rory sighed. 

"No, I say that because it's true. Anyway, do you have any idea how we're going to get him out of there without anyone noticing?" Rory said, switching the topic back to Ricardo. Jack shrugged and glanced again at the stewardess.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Jack reassured him. Rory was far from convinced, but he didn't let on.

**A/N: Honestly, I feel bad for the Doctor. He's in a lot of trouble with a certain ginger. But anyway, sorry that the Jack and Rory section is so short, that's for two reasons. One- the Doctor and Amy part was quite involved for this chapter. Two- this was the best breaking point I had for the upcoming Ricardo adventure.**

**Let me know if you loved it, hated it, or were somewhere in between. Everyone loves feedback!**


	12. To Remember Reality

**A/N: Returning to the Doctor and Amy after an awkward encounter along with Jack and Rory keeping a Mexican Time Lord in check.**

Once the Doctor and Amy had returned to the TARDIS, Amy had strode straight to her room without a word. The Doctor didn't know whether to be relieved or even more worried. He'd escaped her wrath, at least temporarily, but now she was avoiding him. She stayed locked in her room for the next few hours. The Doctor grew bored, assuming she was sleeping, so he began walking around his TARDIS, looking for where the swimming pool had gotten to. Last he'd seen the pool, it had showed up in the console room when he'd accidentally deleted the room it had been in before that, one of the many bathrooms.

After realizing that the stupid thing must have moved again, the Doctor moved on to look in other various rooms. He searched some abandoned bedrooms, the bowling alley, and even the sitting room, but no pool. Feeling rather dejected, he resigned himself to go to the library, shaking his head and walking without much attention to his direction. The library was much better than the swimming pool anyway. The library, after all, was always where he'd left it last. He pushed open the door to the library…

And ended up in the swimming pool.

"Argh!" the Doctor growled in annoyance. He was soaking wet, and in his favorite tweed jacket no less, the one he'd stolen from the hospital in Leadworth. The now wet Time Lord began treading water to examine his surroundings. The library had not moved, the Doctor noted, but the swimming pool had seemingly decided to take back residence in the library, right in front of the door no less. Luckily, it appeared that none of the books had gotten wet in the unceremonious splash he had made upon falling in the pool.

"Wow, look where you're going next time." The Doctor looked up to see a familiar Scot staring down at his floundering self. He was surprised; he hadn't seen her in hours and had assumed she was asleep. But no- Amy was sitting on the floor and dipping her legs in the pool with a book in her hands as if that was exactly where she belonged. Well, wherever Amy was she always acted like that was exactly where she belonged, so that was no different.

"You knew the swimming pool was back in the library?" the Doctor accused. Amy raised her eyebrows. The Doctor knew he shouldn't be the one making angry statements, but he still wanted to know.

"And you didn't?" the ginger Time Lord shot back. Touché. He would really have to keep better track of his own rooms.

"I don't know what's with the old girl. She must just like you better than me today." But he knew why. The TARDIS always sided with the girl onboard whenever said female was angry with him. Maybe it was her way of picking a fight with him, or maybe she wanted to show him that he wasn't always right. Either way, it was a tad irritating.

"Just today?" Amy smirked and turned a page, her eyes glued to her book once more. The Doctor noticed it was an original copy of Beowulf, written down by the monks. Interesting. The Doctor remembered that the English Beowulf was written in was much different than the language Amy spoke natively. In fact, it much more so resembled German. The Doctor swam toward the edge of the pool and hoisted himself out, focusing away from Amy's newly developing language skills, and instead picking up a fluffy blue towel sitting by the edge of the pool.

"Thanks, dear," the Doctor murmured to his ship. So, she might be mad at her Time Lord, but at least she left him a towel.

The Doctor dried his body and clothes off the best he could with the towel and shook his head like a dog, spraying droplets of water everywhere. Amy's eyes did not stray from her book as he did so, but the Doctor knew their conversation wasn't over. In fact, it hadn't really started. The centuries-old man had put a girl into a situation where she was forced to expose herself, and that would not go unspoken about. Knowing this could turn out to be a long and drawn out endeavor, he decided to skip straight to the point of the matter.

"I'm sorry." Amy looked up from her book and met the Doctor's eyes. She pursed her lips and set the book down.

"What exactly happened? The portals? The crazy chimps with guns? The taking clothes off bit, too," Amy asked. The Doctor considered each question before answering it with a nervous look on his face quite similar to that of a school boy being graded on his oral responses.

"The portals. Well, we landed on 052293A, as you know, and it was overrun by whirlpools. The two warring clans that had previously lived there used those whirlpools as portals to other neighboring planets. Whirlpool portals. Whirlportals!" the Doctor smiled at his clever new term but stopped when he saw Amy's facial expression did not match his own. "But that's not important. The whirport… whirlpool that we went through took us to a neighboring planet- 052293B- which was dormant for a long time. That is, until we crashed into one of the pleasure resorts on it and woke up the Thontrons, or, as you called them, chimps with guns." Amy tapped her pointer finger against her leg impatiently, waiting for the next part of his answer.

"And… the Thontrons are a very thorough race, you see. Always collecting data. Since I've had, ah, previous encounters with them, they wanted to know what exactly I was. For records. That's where the taking off clothes part came from. Just for a scan." Amy let out a sigh and leaned back against the book shelf behind her.

"Hey, Doctor?" she queried.

"Yes?"

"Next time we're in the neighborhood of violent aliens that may want us to strip, let me know, okay?" A succinct summary and request.

"Right." This was followed by a slightly uncomfortable silence. The Doctor decided at that point it would be best if he were to return to his room so he could obtain some dry clothes, and Amy remained in the library, resuming Beowulf.

***DW*DW*DW***

The next couple of weeks were filled with many more adventures and visits to other planets. The Doctor had determined that Amy's total knowledge of the universe was vastly incomplete, so he took her to many places and times, showing her all sorts of worlds and cultures. He showed her Earth in its early stages and various points in history. He showed her future homes of the human race. He showed her many new races- the Sontarans, the Silurians, the Ood, and even, unfortunately, the Daleks. But, more importantly, he showed her places she'd seen before in the other reality.

The Doctor wanted to see if there was any way Amy could regain the memories she'd had in the past universe, so he took her to World War II, Space Britain, the 51st century, Venice, Space Florida… anywhere he'd taken her before. But there was nothing. Amy loved each one of them, even when they were confronted with dangers, actually, _especially_ when they were on dangerous adventures. But he was quickly realizing that the past universe was just that- the past. And for a Time Lord, not being able to visit the past was a bizarre thing.

"So, what did you think of Space Britain? One of my favorites," the Doctor asked with a light smile. He'd saved that adventure for near the end, holding onto hope. It had been their first adventure off Earth in the other reality. Amy laughed, remembering how ridiculous the Doctor had looked when he'd approached Liz 10 and asked to see the star whale. He'd been wearing a fez for the occasion.

"Amazing. I can't believe that's what Britain'll be one day." Then Amy's expression turned to suspicion. "And that you've met the queen, supposedly, but she doesn't remember you. Now that I don't know if I believe at all," Amy said with a doubtful tone.

The Doctor shrugged. He had, of course, met Liz 10 before, but that was Before, as he was starting to think of it. "Before" his universe had been turned upside down. His smile faltered. He had tried taking her to the places she'd seen Before, the species she'd met, and even worn a fez. Though with resignation, he was beginning to accept that Amy would never remember life Before.

"I took you there once. It was our first real adventure," the old man recounted. Amy stood closer to him, taking his hand even. She might not remember it, but she was certainly empathetic. Time Lord eyes met their equal as the two locked sights on each other.

"Doctor… why can't you see that she's me? I _am_ Amy Pond. Just because I can't remember this other reality, don't have those memories… that doesn't mean I've changed." Amy kept her voice gentle but firm. The Doctor could tell these words had been waiting to come out for a while now.

"You have changed. You're a Time Lord now." Ancient eyes watched their younger counterparts fill with a raging defiance.

"Isn't that a good thing? If I was human, you'd have to leave me behind one day. Now you don't have to. We can travel time and rebuild a home for people like us. We can travel forever!" Amy's voice was edging toward a yell. The Doctor closed his eyes, unable to look at her any longer.

"That's not how it was supposed to be-"

"Why won't you let go of your old reality? What's so great about it? You were going to leave me eventually. How is that a good thing?" The ginger's voice rose in pitch and volume. The Doctor couldn't take the questions any longer. They caused him to think about things- things that he had stored away in his brain for too long. Guilt. Guilt over leaving people, time after time.

"Because in my reality everything made _sense_! Pain made sense!" he exploded. Immediately after doing so, he regretted it. He opened his eyes and saw how Amy backed up, let go of his hand, retreated from him. He'd frightened her. That was never his intention.

"Well I'm sorry that my reality doesn't make _sense_, Doctor," Amy spoke with calmly controlled venom. It was her defense mechanism. He'd gotten her so far out of her shell, and now this- he'd forced her back again. "I'm _sorry _that I thought I was going to travel with you for a while, maybe even forever." That sliced deep. It reminded the Doctor of words Donna had spoken after she'd met River. She'd asked what would happen to her, why River didn't know her, what her future would hold. And, just like then, he had no answer for his flaming haired companion. No good one, anyway.

"Amy…" he whispered, reaching out his hand toward her. She recoiled and his hearts slipped a little lower in his chest. "Amy, Amy, Amy… I didn't mean all that. I didn't mean that I don't want you to travel with me. I only meant that this is all so different for me. But it doesn't matter what I meant. What matters is that I want you to travel with me, not just for a while." He paused then. "Forever." And then he let that word sink in, not just for Amy.

He knew he had far from gained Amy's trust, but it was a start. She looked truly shocked, though not in a bad way, with his remark. Honestly, he didn't even know if he accepted it all the way. But he knew that it was true.

"So, we've got forever and about a hundred Time Lords to spend it with. What do you say we look for something a little closer to five stars than 052293A?" the Doctor offered. Amy didn't quite smile, but she didn't decline either. It was a start.

***DW*DW*DW***

As soon as the plane touched ground, Jack and Rory had started running. It reminded Rory of the little time he'd spent with the Doctor- an awful lot of running. But then that reminded him of Amy, so he stopped thinking about that. This was no time to be thinking about his Scottish friend. There was a Mexican Time Lord running around.

"How's your Spanish, amigo?" Jack asked as they ran to catch a taxi. Rory made a grunting noise that he hoped Jack took to mean "not the best." It was a hot day, so there was a long line for taxis out of the airport, but Jack helped that along. After a group of teenagers attempted to cut in line in front of the ex-time agent, Jack saw fit to utilize his sonic blaster. Only as a threat of course. The teens backed off with their hands raised, shouting a stream of curses at the man. Jack slammed the taxi door after sliding in after Rory.

"That's one way to catch a cab," Rory said, not altogether put off. After all, it did mean they got out of the heat faster. Jack tossed him a killer smile before handing the taxi driver a wad of cash and directing him to drop the pair off at a street name Rory couldn't pronounce. Something "calle."

"Gotta love Mexico. It's one place where no one calls the cops on you when you use a gun to get what you want. In this country, that's called politics," Jack said with a hint of appreciation.

The cab ride wasn't altogether terrible, especially after Jack's gun comment. The driver seemed to know enough English to catch the word "gun"; after all, he drove a lot faster at that point. When they reached the address Jack had given the driver, Jack thanked him, and the two Torchwood agents departed their cab to enter the capital building. For being the building that housed the president of the country, it didn't look like all that much.

"You ready to take care of another Time Lord?" Rory asked. Jack gave him two thumbs up before stepping up to a door guarded by two heavily armed men in sunglasses and sombreros.

"We're here to see President Ricardo Martinez," Jack stated to the men. The one on the left turned slightly to meet the gaze of his counterpart on the right.

"Ricardo? Quien nosotros?" the armed man on the right asked. Rory had no idea what his question meant, but luckily Jack did.

"Soy Jack Harkness de Torchwood Instituto." Rory didn't need and translator on that one. The man on the left lowered his sunglasses to get a better look at them.

"Si. Sígueme," the man on the left instructed, motioning for Jack and Rory to follow him as he opened the doors. The guard on the right stayed behind, presumably to keep a watchful eye on the outside world as two foreign agents took care of his president. The Mexican man currently leading the two agents into the dark building casually spun his pistol and placed it in a holster at his hip in favor of a modified shot gun. Not for the first time, Rory wished he hadn't declined carrying a gun on his missions. It was that sort of day.

**A/N: I haven't been getting much in the way of feedback, but I hope the 24 people who have this alerted are still enjoying!**

**Also, I just watched The Wedding of River Song and… wow. Moffat, you're going to be the death of me! So much going on.**


	13. Colonnades and Sparkles

It was night time when it happened- the return of the Doctor's worries. Well, it was night on the planet they'd just left (another failed investigation for a home planet) and Amy was sleeping, so that was as close as it ever got to night on the TARDIS. The Doctor was almost worried that his ship was too quiet as he casually took apart and put back together again a crucial part of the motor. He was left with two spare parts, but that always seemed to happen. He sighed, lifting his work goggles up off his eyes and pushed them to the top of his head. It was just as he was deciding that perhaps he should get some sleep when he got a message on his psychic paper- _Open Up._

Curious, the Time Lord stared down at the paper, trying to understand what it meant and who it could be from. Open up what? He didn't have long to wait, however, because a few seconds later there was a knock on the TARDIS door. Wait. No one knocked on his door. But that must be what the "open up" was about. Never one to turn down a mystery, the Doctor waltzed up to his own front door and opened up.

"River," the Doctor greeted in surprise as she came casually tumbling into his ship. "We're in deep space. What are you doing- and wait- how are you doing that?" People weren't supposed to be able to just walk up to his front door when he was traveling in deep space. River gave him a smile.

"How? Oh, I think you don't really need to know that. A girl has her ways. As for why, I came to see you of course," the curly-haired woman responded, standing and brushing off her pants. The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. He didn't know exactly what to think of River. He knew now that she was part Time Lord and the child of Amy and Rory… even though that didn't seem possible in this reality. Not only that, but she had memories of the past universe when no one else did. And she even saw him when he was invisible to the rest of Earth.

"River, River, River. How do you exist?" the Doctor inquired. This woman just became more of an enigma the more he learned about her. River checked herself in the scanner, fixing her hair accordingly.

"You see, Doctor, my parents decided one day while the TARDIS was in mid-flight-" River began with a coy smile. The Doctor cut her off with emphatic hand motions, waving them back and forth in a cutting motion.

"You know what I mean. Your past is from the past universe," the Doctor amended his question. River, apparently satisfied with how her hair looked, turned back around to look at the Doctor.

"Is there really a past universe? Or is this all one ball of strings made by choices weaved together? And then there's you- the cat played with the ball of string that is all of reality's parts," River quipped. The old Gallifreyan man found himself wanting to shake this woman until she made sense. He growled in frustration under his breath but River only smirked.

"Does anything you say ever make any sense?" the Doctor asked with exasperation quite clear in his voice.

"Not anymore. Not to you. But that's for another day. Today I came with a message. There's this place in the Persephone galaxy. It used to have a sentient race of small bacteria as its only inhabitants, but they've moved on. It's part of a binary solar system and the grass is orange. You're going to let Amy name it and she's going to call it New Gallifrey," River stated as if she had memorized a script. The Doctor didn't quite know what to say, but River was already making for the door. "If that wasn't straightforward, I don't know what is. Have fun, Doctor, especially on Apalapucia," River added with a wink.

"What?" the Doctor asked, stunned with confusion. River gave a short laugh before opening the doors to the TARDIS and disappearing from sight.

"That woman…" the old man sighed. He snapped the goggles back on his face and returned to adjusting his beloved space ship and time machine for another hour or two before catching a bit of sleep.

***DW*DW*DW***

"Apalapucia!" the Doctor exclaimed the next day. Amy looked at him oddly.

"Apalap… come again?" Amy attempted to repeat what she'd heard, but couldn't.

"Apalapucia," he said a little slower. "It's voted number two planet in the top ten greatest destinations for the discerning intergalactic traveler. Number one is hideous, so we're not going there. Besides, everyone goes there. Here on number two, I give you sunsets, spires, soaring silver colonnades!" the Doctor pronounced, pushing open his front doors for effect. Indeed, the sights beyond those doors made Amy gasp in spite of all the amazing sights she'd seen while traveling with the other Time Lord.

The first thing the redhead noticed was the sky. There was a setting sun covered partially by swirling clouds cast in beautiful pinks and purples and oranges. The next thing she observed was that the gorgeous colors from the setting sun were reflected in the "soaring silver colonnades" the Doctor had mentioned. Each colonnade towered higher than any skyscraper Amy had ever seen or any architect had dreamed. There were thirteen total that she could count and they were arranged in a large semicircle. Interspersed in the colonnades were thin spires poking toward the sky like needles on the back of a metallic porcupine.

"Wonderful, isn't it? And it's always sunset here, never day or night. The planet rotated just evenly enough that the sun it revolves around stays firm on the skyline. There's an old saying, actually, that 'When night falls on Apalapucia, silence falls on Cacophony.'" The Doctor waited for Amy to get the expression, but she cocked her head to one side, not reacting. "Cacophony, the planet, it's always noisy… okay, fine. Say it as silence falls on New York if that makes you feel better." Amy laughed at that, knowing that the Doctor was trying to make it funny in terms she would understand. Amy exited the TARDIS and walked a few steps closer toward the sea where the sun hung in a precarious balance over.

"Can we go up there?" Amy asked, pointing to one of the silver colonnades. They were built to be several feet wide, plenty enough room for standing. The Doctor could rarely refuse a request that allowed him to show off his skills with his ship, so of course he replied that they could. Plus, he wanted to know why River had told him to enjoy Apalapcia. She was from his future in some way, so she obviously knew something about this day that he didn't. So the oldest young man in the universe landed his faithful machine atop one of the colonnades- the one at the farthest point on the semicircle- the one closest to the sea.

"It's breathtaking," Amy breathed. She walked out slowly to the edge of the structure and sat down, hanging her legs over the side. The Doctor eyed her closely as she did this, ready to jump back into the TARDIS to catch her if she started falling. But she didn't. So he did what any gentleman would do- he joined her on the edge.

The two Time Lords sat in silence for a while, taking in everything around them and enjoying each other's company. In that moment on the silver colonnade on Apalapucia near the sea, nothing needed to be said. For a short time, the two protectors of the universe stopped thinking about worlds in trouble, Time Lords running amok on Earth, finding a new home planet, or curious people that knew too much. They only thought of beauty and how it was so obvious both in their surroundings and, though neither said it for the longest of times, each other.

"Why can't all worlds be like this?" Amy asked wistfully, swinging her feet gently in a way that still managed to make the Doctor nervous. She was, after all, more than half a mile above the ground.

"Because that would be boring. If every world looked exactly the same, I'd be so utterly _bored_," the Doctor explained simply. Amy smiled softly and nodded, leaning her head ever so lightly on the Doctor's shoulder. He wasn't expecting it, but he returned the gesture, letting his head relax against hers.

"And then it wouldn't be as beautiful, not if everything else was the same," Amy added. The Doctor made a small noise of approval and the air was filled with companionable silence once more filled only by four heartbeats and the distant sound of ocean waves crashing half a mile down. Finally, the two could ignore their problems no longer. The Doctor lifted his head and Amy did so in response, turning her head to look at him.

"We need to pay a visit to Rory and Jack," the Doctor said with a heavy heart. He didn't want to return to his troubles, to his newly created race of uneducated Time Lords running around with no idea what they were capable of. He didn't want to leave Amy's side on the soaring colonnade of Apalapcia where nothing seemed it could go wrong. Amy seemed to have a similar thought pattern because she changed the expression on her face to one with much more thought.

"Yeah, I know we have to go back to them. But before we do, Doctor, while we're still on a peaceful world, alone…" Amy trailed off, leaning in toward the Doctor's face. Little alarms blared in his mind like little policemen. No. This was a situation he should avoid.

"What are you doing?" the Doctor asked as calmly as he could. Amy closed her eyes for a bit longer than a blink and took a deep breath, but she did not move away. She was so close that he could count each fleck of color in her eyes and even measure the exact diameter of her pupils if he wanted to… which he didn't.

"What, has it been too long? Usually when someone gets this close to your face, they want you to kiss them," Amy said with restrained irritation. The Doctor cleared his throat and backed up a few inches. Amy gave him an annoyed looked fueled by angry disappointment. The Doctor decided not to mention that no, it hadn't been a while, she'd done something similar to that not too long ago in the past reality, only she'd been a bit more insistent about getting her way.

"No, no, but you shouldn't be wanting to kiss me. Why would you want to _kiss_ me?" the Doctor asked, trying to be rhetorical. He certainly didn't know the answer, but he had a feeling that if she gave him the answer it wouldn't exactly help the situation.

"You suddenly show up in my life again after fourteen years of waiting, and you've got a time machine, and you're so very kind, and very attractive, and you clearly had some sort of connection with me in a past reality. You don't think a girl's going to notice?" Amy's voice had gone from calm annoyance to outright exasperation. This was not exactly how he'd imagined his question turning out. But she'd posed a question for him in return, so he decided to start with that.

"Er, no?" he tried. Amy rolled her eyes. "Look, I don't know about all of what you've said, but there wasn't much of a 'connection' between us besides you traveling with me in the past reality." Amy laughed at that. Actually laughed.

"Oh please. I've heard you talk about her, about me, before. And I think we both know you were in love with her. But she's me, without all the human stuff getting in the way." The Doctor was quite unprepared for this. Usually he was quite good at defending himself in an argument, but this one was way beyond him. "Admit it, Doctor. You felt something for me in the other reality." He swallowed, unable to speak. It had been hard enough pushing Amy away from him that day in her bedroom when she'd told him she was getting married in the previous reality, and now she was doing it again. But this time he couldn't used the human excuse _or_ the engaged excuse. Amy Pond was a very tempting woman to kiss.

"You can't tell me-" Amy's next sentence didn't get much farther than that, because at that point, the Doctor had taken hold of either side of Amy's face and pressed his lips to her own. She made a small sound of surprise but instantly reciprocated, moving her hands to pull him closer to her. But by the time she'd begun moving her arms, the Doctor had already retreated and sprung to his feet.

***DW*DW*DW***

"They're on their way in, sir," a woman said in a heavily accented voice to the imposing form of Ricardo Martinez. The Mexican leader nodded once, indicating that he had heard the woman's message and that she should leave his presence. She obeyed, leaving Ricardo alone with only his closest bodyguard.

"Alejandro. Make sure these men don't try anything stupid. But don't let them know you're watching too closely. They might want to take you out," the president commanded. The bodyguard grunted in response.

The door to the room burst open, revealing a man with a ridiculous grin and coat to the floor along with a grim looking man with more normal attire.

"Welcome, agents of Torchwood. Would you care to explain why I sparkled orange and turned into a blonde?"

**A/N: I think that I may be putting this story on hiatus due many reasons, some of which include more school work, a lack of motivation, and a lack of interest from readers. But if and when I do continue, I will be explaining the mysteries of River, returning to the Amy/11 issues, and introducing Rory and Jack to Ricardo.**


	14. Explanations of Sorts

**A/N: Right, so that hiatus didn't really go as planned. I have apparently decided that schoolwork is overrated. As a result, here's a chapter.**

"We really should get going," the Doctor said as if nothing had happened. He turned heel sharply and strode into the TARDIS, leaving a rather stunned Amy sitting on the edge of the colonnade touching her lips and wondering if she'd imagined what had just happened.

She stood up and followed him into the ship, far from done with their conversation, and feeling resolute in getting an answer as to what had just happened. The Doctor was sprinting around his console in a huff, not meeting Amy's eye at all. In fact, he seemed determined to do anything but that. She stalked him closely with her eyes. There was no way he was going to distract her from her goal.

"Apalapucia is wonderful that time of year, but wait until you see number three on the list! It's got the most gorgeous water you've ever seen, and they have gravity globes all over the place so you can actually walk on water, would you believe it? And the fish there make you wish you could breathe underwater just to get a closer look. Their scales have miniaturized rainbows in them, I swear. There's nothing like one up close, in the yellow waters," the Doctor was rambling, and Amy knew it. And she knew he knew it too. Her eyes narrowed as she watched him running around his TARDIS like a madman, spewing information about a place Amy couldn't care less about.

"Are you done yet?" Amy asked in exasperation. The Doctor gave her a look of entertainment, but still did not meet her gaze.

"Hardly! Number four on the list might just truly be the best, you know. It's a planet made up entirely of shoes. Actual shoes from all different species across the universe, well, any species that wears clothes that is. Earth contributed quite a lot, I'll have you know. You should be proud. And-" Amy cleared her throat loudly.

"Not what I wanted to hear about." The Doctor coughed lightly and twisted his bow tie around, still pressing down levers and pulling controls that Amy was sure did nothing but occupy his hands.

"What do you want to hear about, then? We could go to the bottom of the list," the Doctor suggested. But it was a half-hearted attempt at best. Amy shook her head once, and the Doctor knew there was no escaping it. He opened his mouth to direct his companion to the next topic of interest that came to his expansive mind, but Amy was faster.

"I want to hear about what just happened on Apalapucia. And no, before you start, I don't want to hear about the sunset, or how it works, or how those silver things were made. You know what I'm asking about." A nervous swallow. There was the question, and what a difficult one to avoid. The problem was, the Doctor hardly knew the answer to that question himself.

The two Time Lords sat down next to each other on the stairs leading up to the main console, just inches apart from one another. Here it goes, the self-forbidden conversation that the Doctor has dreaded. What had he done that for? He hadn't meant to slip up like that, but it had still happened, and Amy would not let the topic drop.

"You kept talking and I… had to shut you up." Amy stared at him with skepticism.

"To shut me up? I know you better than that," Amy scoffed.

"It was nothing, just sort of… happened." Now the look in the redhead's eyes turned to derision.

"What? I'm sorry, but _what_?" There was the Scottish temper. "You kissed me and then say, 'Oh, it was nothing! Just a little thing to shut you up!' Yeah, not gonna fly," Amy fumed. The Doctor subconsciously backed up a few inches but he didn't leave the step he was sitting on. The Doctor not responding for several moments led Amy to continue. "You can't push me away because I'm human, or because you don't get older, or because you're dangerous, or, or, because I'm _engaged_. None of that matters anymore." The Doctor licked his lips with a bit of anxiety.

"But this reality-"

"Is the only one you've got," Amy cut him off clean. And in that moment, the Doctor felt something much like anger bubble up inside him, fighting to escape. It wasn't directed at Amy, but more so at more abstract concepts, like the universe and everything around him.

"You don't understand! I was supposed to be wiped from all memory. I'm not even supposed to exist right now." The anger was building in pressure, waiting to explode out of him. Not yet, but he could feel it. Maybe Amy sensed it, since she softened her gaze.

"But I remembered meeting you as a little girl," she spoke quietly. The Doctor had been thinking about that, but he hadn't been able to come to a conclusion.

"Exactly. And Torchwood had files on me still, which means… oh. Oh. I didn't alter all of reality, just erased from memories in minds. All that I've done… well, that stayed. Just, no one could remember me specifically, but you, you did and that's because you grew up with a time crack in your wall, at least in the other reality, and you're a time traveler. So only you could remember any meeting of me." The _and River_ part of his sentence was kept safe inside his mind for the time being. It was too complicated to explain to his companion: River being Amy and Rory's daughter, the possible romance he was supposed to have with her in his future…

"So basically what you're getting at is that when you rebooted the universe, the program you used, the Pandorica, used all the resources it could, including you. But it couldn't bring you back all the way without more power, the living power of a human mind with a strong connection to you," Amy guessed. The Doctor's jaw almost dropped; Amy had just explained to him the reason he still existed using a computer analogy. If it wasn't for the awkwardness that had ensued earlier due to similar events, he would have bloody kissed her.

"How did you come up with all that?" In response, Amy tapped the side of her head with her index finger.

"It's not all thoughts of skirts and flirting up here," the ginger replied.

"You sure?" This time it was the Doctor filled with skepticism.

"Well, only sometimes, when I'm not…" Amy looked the Doctor up and down. "Distracted." The Doctor cleared his throat and stood up, ignoring his fellow Time Lord's obvious remarks and turning instead to the controls.

"Hate to break it to you, but I've got a different type of distraction for you. The Persephone galaxy! Well, that's how it was named- will be named- by the humans when they discover it. Big into Greek mythology with their astronomy, those humans are. Love a human. But anyway, we've got a mission, or have you forgotten that we need to go house shopping?" The Doctor skipped around his console in a fervor of sorts.

Amy laughed at his antics, and he was glad of it. Not for the first time, the Gallifreyean man had dodged a bullet in conversation and was completely unsure of how. He'd actually managed to get Amy off topic and talking about the Pandorica and then back to flirting. The last part though, he had to admit, was fairly easy. Besides, he had a planet to explore and make into a home for him and the rest of his species. With a flick of a switch, the Doctor sent his TARDIS into flight.

"Geronimo!"

***DW*DW*DW***

"Welcome, agents of Torchwood. Would you care to explain why I sparkled orange and turned into a blonde?" the president asked with his arms crossed. Rory sent a sharp look to Jack and the second man shrugged, indicating he would leave that loaded question to Rory.

"Well, you're a Time Lord," Rory stated. Jack rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly leaned forward toward his partner.

"Way to lead him in slowly there," Jack whispered with sarcasm. Rory ignored the man and continued on.

"This means that, yes, you can regenerate. It's a Time Lord's way of cheating death. When you're about to die, your body registers that and sort of restarts. As far as I can tell, it changes just about everything about you physically and slightly mentally too. You also should have two hearts, a more capable brain, and possibly other traits that aren't human." Rory paused, watching as Ricardo's eyebrows rose higher and higher with every word. "And I basically sound like a walking textbook," Rory added dryly. Jack laughed, but Ricardo and his guard seemed less amused.

"I'll take this. The upsides- practical immortality and more brains. The downsides- you may get ugly after regeneration and you're not human. Oh, and you can't run a country anymore," Jack said with a nonchalant smile. Ricardo's eyebrows lowered, but not quite back to normal.

"So you two _gringos_ expect me to believe that I'm an alien?" Ricaro asked rhetorically. "But yes, I suppose you do. _Dios mío._ I do have a, ah, heart murmur? So that would be two hearts, right. And I just got proof of the regeneration part. And I guess I can't rule my country any more because they wouldn't recognize me as Ricardo Martinez anymore. Alejandro and a few other of my closest people only believe me because they saw it happen. But what now can I do? Where do I belong?" The man appeared to be a large and independent man, but here he was asking where he belonged in the universe, just like everybody else on the little lump of rock called Earth. It was fairly comforting to Rory.

"Actually, that's why we're here. Two of our… associates are currently searching for a planet for Time Lords to reside on. Temporarily, we strongly suggest you come with us for protection and eventually moving in day," Jack answered, emphasizing that though he may have said the words 'strongly suggest', he'd meant it wasn't really an option.

Ricardo sighed and sat down behind his desk, not looking nearly as intimidating when he was sitting down. Alejandro however, the guard, still looked like a lethal force as he stood stock still next to the president's desk. Rory and Jack took a few steps closer to the desk. This was going to be a complicated extraction of a Time Lord since he was a public figure. It wasn't just like taking a homeless guy off the streets or an aboriginal in the jungle- this was a well-known man in charge of running a country that was already in a bad state. That meant there was a lot of work for Torchwood to do, specifically for Jack and Rory. Well, if Rory was honest, the work was mostly for Jack. Jack knew more about how the bureaucratic systems of the institute worked and more of the recently instituted protocols about the removal of someone. He also had connections that could help him get the job done. Rory was mostly there for assistance and as sort of the Doctor's liaison, even though Rory had only known the alien man for about a day.

"You need to tell us exactly what happened when you were shot," Jack commanded of Ricardo. The blonde president nodded wearily, clearly still feeling the aftereffects of regeneration.

"And Alejandro, you should probably tell us how much of his story has been relayed to the press," Rory added on. He was glad to receive the approving look from Jack for his contribution to the investigation.

"Okay. Well, there's not much of a _historia_. I was going to go meet with a man named José Guerrero. José recently took over for his second cousin, the man responsible for one of the rising drug cartels in the area north of the capital. You see, he didn't originally want to be in that life, but it's family, you know? It's hard to get out of it, and he had a lot of pressure to take over when his cousin died. But one of my men knew José from childhood, and my man convinced him to set up a meet with me in secret so we could work out a way to sabotage his cartel without his people knowing it. Alejandro was driving me to the meet, and the next thing I knew, a bullet hit me in the head. After that, I blacked out for a bit, and when I woke up, I was glowing orange, so I called Torchwood because I'd heard of you from a friend in America. After that, I blacked out again. _Lo siento_, that's it." Ricardo shrugged and turned to his guard.

"I was driving. I turned to see him sparkle and explode. Then he was blonde. The press thinks he died," Alejandro spoke in a voice with a much thicker accent and with more basic words. It was obvious that he did not know as much English as Ricardo.

"Thank you both," Jack nodded in gratitude, so Rory copied his motion. "Ricardo, we'll be taking you with us to Britain where you'll be staying at the Torchwood Institute until we can safely move you to the Time Lord's new home. Alejandro, we're going to let you take care of the press here in Mexico. Continue telling them that he's dead; we can't have it getting out that he's still alive. Oh, and try to keep an eye on whoever's president next," Jack handed out the orders like he was born ready for these situations. Rory wished he was the same way, but he was getting along pretty well for still being the new guy.

"Very well. Take care of our country, Alejandro," Ricardo bade his guard farewell. The Hispanic man left the building with the two Torchwood agents, not knowing how much more interesting things would get for them by the time they returned to Torchwood.

**A/N: I can't stop writing this story, so it's coming back, haha. This chapter had a lot of explanations, so I hope that answered a lot of questions for you. And as for the question of River, don't worry, the answer's coming. **

**I still can't believe I have to wait until Christmas for Doctor Who… Must resort to more fanfiction!**


	15. The Doctor's Family

**A/N: Sorry about the wait for this. Schoolwork and the like.**

"So, how'd you come up with this one?" Amy asked in a light voice, leaning against the console across from the Doctor. He smiled at her, keeping it as normal as his mind would allow.

"A friend told me I should visit," the Doctor responded, quick on his feet to open the blue door. Outside, he saw proof of River's words- it was indeed a binary system, since two suns lit the sky, and orange grass was scattered in a large field. The field of orange grass spanned for what was probably miles to each side, but straight ahead there was a large lake that appeared as if it was made of glass. The Doctor took Amy's hand and the two strode through the grasses toward the lake, neither saying a word while they did so. The air felt clean and fresh, like air in the woods far from any road or house. Scattered in the field were small trees that grew to be no taller than a person with brilliant green and purple leaves sprouting out of gnarled branches. It was tranquil and a sort of odd beauty.

When the pair reached the lake, they noticed that small pebbles lined the clear water and little fish that looked rather like tadpoles swarmed in front of and behind some of the larger rocks on the bottom of the lake. Amy reached down and picked up a flat pebble, and, with a flick of her wrist, sent it skipping across the surface of the water. The Doctor almost laughed aloud, noticing that Amy sent the rock at the exact perfect angle for maximum skipage. And then he did laugh at his new word.

"What?" Amy questioned. The older Time Lord realized that Amy had no idea why he was laughing. He had been noticing Amy's advanced intuition for physics, but only in his head.

"It's just that this place reminds me of home- my old home- Gallifrey." It wasn't a lie. Indeed, the fiery hue this planet had brought back a strong wave of nostalgia for the Doctor. Amy bent down again to find another suitable rock for skipping.

"So this planet, I'm guessing you already know it's livable," Amy stated. She found her chosen rock and righted herself, looking directly into the Doctor's eyes. He could not hide his response from here. In all reality, he found it very difficult not to tell her everything that was on his mind in the moment- River, this new home planet, memories it invoked, his thoughts of her. But he bit his tongue.

"Yes. But you get to name it." And then he held his breath. So far, everything River had said held true. She'd been right about having an interesting adventure on Apalapucia and finding a livable planet in the Persephone galaxy with two suns, so he waited to hear if she was right about what Amy would name this planet.

"Well, there's not much choice is there? How about Pond Land?" And for just a moment, the Doctor faltered before realizing she'd meant it as a joke. His face had gone blank, and Amy laughed at him. "You didn't think I was serious, did you? You did! Well, I'm actually naming it New Gallifrey." The Doctor joined her in laughing, realizing how stupid he'd been.

The Scottish woman's laughter died down, but she was still smiling as she pressed the smooth stone into the Doctor's palm. He ran his thumb over it, feeling it's texture and Amy looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to throw it. So he did- and it skipped out across the surface, leaving little ripples on the glassy water in its wake. It sunk to the bottom just short of where Amy's rock had. When he looked back up at his ginger companion, he observed that she had noticed that hers had gone farther judging by the triumphant expression on her face.

For another few minutes, they stayed there on the shoreline, skimming pebbles across the lake. Amy's always went farther. But then they walked back through the grass and to the TARDIS. Both of them knew it without saying a word- this was going to be the new home for a hundred Time Lords, and they wanted to get those people here as soon as possible.

"So, what do you think? We've been gone a few months, but that probably won't be enough time. How about eight months their time?" the Doctor asked. Amy's face split into a grin at the thought of seeing her other best friend again and checking up on the rest of her race.

"I hope Jack and Rory haven't killed each other," Amy mused. The TARDIS dematerialized, its course set for Earth eight months after the two Time Lords had last seen Rory and Jack.

***DW*DW*DW***

"Sir, we've got a problem. He's done it again," a young soldier said. He couldn't have been more than 20 years old. Jack nodded at the boy and led Rory and Ricardo into the main control room at Torchwood.

"Where did he land her this time?" Rory asked. The soldier pointed across the room where a man in a bowtie leaned up against a blue police box from the 1960s in the middle of the Torchwood Institute. Who else, right?

"Hello Rory and Jack. I'm back!" the Doctor exclaimed.

"Hey, Doc! You don't look a day over 906," Jack greeted the Time Lord cheekily. The Doctor just smiled, clearly not that offended.

"I could say the same of you, Captain," the Doctor responded cheerfully.

"Touché." The Doctor laughed and hugged both Jack and Rory.

"So, how long has it been? About eight months, right? Unless I overshot."

"Exactly. Wow, I can't believe you're on time," Rory mused, his voice sounding like a cross between impressed and surprised.

"On time? I'm a Time Lord, Lord of Time. Time is not the boss of me, Rule 408," the Doctor defended himself. Rory scoffed, apparently not nearly as impressed with this statement.

"Yeah, except Amy had to wait 14 years for you." The Doctor cringed slightly. "Speaking of, where is she?" Rory craned his neck, looking around for where his long-time friend was.

"Was it 14? I was rather hoping it'd be less in this reality." From the looks the messy haired men received from his two friends, he remembered that he may have forgotten to mention the whole rebooted and rewritten reality thing. "And Amy wanted to go straight to the new Time Lords even though I _told_ her to wait until we found you two."

"Hold on, _this _reality?" Rory asked.

"How many are there?" Jack added, obviously curious. The Doctor groaned and waved his hands around in impatience.

"Oh, more than you'd think. And most certainly more than I'd like."

"O…kay…" Rory drawled.

"Down to business! How'd you do with rounding up my new family?" the Doctor got to the point of his visit. "Oh, I haven't said that one before. Well, sort of. Once. But that's not the point."

"Your family?" Jack asked with raised eyebrows at the odd term. "They might not have all gotten your good looks, but-"

"We've found 98 of them, actually. It was less until we came back to find the department found another group of them online," Rory interrupted and completed the answer Jack would have surely gotten around to eventually. Jack rolled his eyes and messed up his partner's hair.

"No fun at parties, are you?" Jack teased. Rory sighed and shoved the agent's hand off his head. The Doctor looked from one to the other and laughed.

"Look at you two, off like a married couple," the Doctor said with amusement.

"No, completely no," Rory said, quickly followed by a remark from Jack.

"Yeah, believe me, I've tried."

"Was it the Vegas offer again?" the Doctor asked expectantly. Jack, though he may have been surprised that the Doctor knew about his past, gave no indication that the Time Lord's comment was unusual.

"Hey! Alonso loved that wedding! And that was one of my best stags, now that I think about it. You really should've been there," Jack reminisced.

Continuing their conversation, Jack and Rory started leading the Doctor to the part of the Institute devoted to housing the 98 Time Lords Torchwood had acquired in the past eight months. Once the three arrived, they found a redheaded Time Lord walking amongst close to a hundred others in a large room with simple metal walls and many bunk beds. Some sections of the walls had been decorated with picture frames and souvenirs and other memorabilia from the current tenants. The ones who had been living there longer had made their areas more personal and even added some aesthetic decorations like plants and knickknacks.

"Amy!" Rory exclaimed as soon as he set eyes on her. Amy whipped her head around, her red hair flipping over her shoulder in the process, and then she ran to her friend and embraced him in a bone-crushing hug. Rory, though his ribs were smarting, grinned from ear to ear and returned the hug. Amy pulled back and greeted Jack with a hello.

"What, where's my tackling hug?" Jack asked with a pout.

"I'm sure Rory will give you one," Amy fired back without missing a beat. Rory held his hands out in front of him as a line of defense between himself and Jack.

"So, 98 plus Amy and I equaled an even hundred Time Lords. Nice number," the Doctor said appreciatively.

He scanned the room, seeing the fire in each and every one of these deceivingly humanoid eyes. Each iris burned with the fire that could restore or destroy life, such a volatile power that could be wielded by any one being. Without control, he knew just one of these Time Lords could supernova every star in a galaxy with carefully used talents. It was a power that needed control, yes, but it had another more subtle power as well. Every person in the room currently, except Jack, Rory, and a few soldiers, felt drawn to one another in an inexplicable fashion. Each one shared the eternal bond of being the same species and, as another bond, felt each other's presence on a completely different level. Psychically, a hundred minds were just on the horizon of one another.

"You got a microphone in here by any chance?" the Doctor asked Jack and Rory. Rory shrugged, but Jack turned to one of the soldiers walking around the room with a stack of food trays.

"Mikey had one. I've heard him using it after hours in the bathroom," Jack offered. "Hey, Mikey!" The soldier jumped and ended up dropping all his trays as a result. Jack bent down to help him pick them up.

"Sorry about that. You still have that microphone?" Jack asked. Mikey nodded, looking a little rattled, but he pulled out a microphone from the tool belt he was wearing and handed it over. The soldier quickly finished restacking his trays before hurrying off with out another word but blushing from embarrassment. Jack handed the wireless mic over to the Doctor.

"Hello, you lot! As I'm sure you've noticed, I'm like you, a Time Lord. What some of you may not have noticed is that I've been around quite a lot longer than you, though if you take a moment to look at me closer, you can probably see all ten of my other faces if you concentrate. It's a thing with us. But anyway, I know quite a bit about out kind, and it's important that you all learn about it. We're not human, but we're not gods either. And not immortal, so don't think that. For now, I'll be watching all of you to make sure you don't do anything stupid, because you're like little children with AK-47s right now with the amount of power you have. I'm going to teach you about who we are, why we are, where we'll live, what we can do, and all that, because that's my new job. Even though I don't get paid." The Doctor paused for a moment, every eye on him.

"Hello. I'm the Doctor."

**A/N: So the Doctor's got 98 new Time Lords to manage with Amy and a little help from Rory and Jack. At least he's got their attention.**

**Next chapter marks the return of the mysterious River Song where we finally find out what's going on with her in terms of the little things like, oh, how she still exists.**

**One more thing, if you have any names for some of the 98 Time Lords, let me know!**


	16. Doctor Plus 99

**A/N: So I might not be updating as frequently, probably once a week at the most, because I've got auditions and projects and might possibly be doing NaNoWriMo… but I'll probably fail at it.**

**99 new Time Lords. Is anyone else thinking of the children's song, 99 bottles of beer on the wall? …No? Just me? Okay, nevermind, just read and review.**

With a captive audience in front of him, the Doctor couldn't help but be a showman. With the last part of his speech, the part where he'd unashamedly advertised himself, he'd added a great flourish with his hands and a grin that could light up a room. These theatrics did not go unnoticed by the others in the room, but not all people found them to be quite as impressive.

"Is he always this melodramatic?" Rory whispered to Amy. The ginger Time Lord giggled lightly but didn't answer. She didn't really need to.

"Whatever you two are whispering about over there is probably wrong and uninteresting, so you should really listen to me instead," the Doctor said in a cheerfully brisk voice. Ignoring some of the open-mouthed looks still aimed his way from various Time Lords in the audience he had already mostly forgotten, the Doctor approached Jack, Rory, and Amy. "We need to take this lot to New Gallifrey in the Persephone Galaxy and I could use two humans in the TARDIS to calm all of my little children down."

"Don't call them your children," Amy groaned. The Doctor looked at her curiously.

"Why not?" The old man's young face remained obviously unaware. Amy resisted from rolling her eyes. Sometimes she had to remind herself that even if he was the oldest Time Lord in existence, he still didn't always register what he'd actually said until long after he'd said it.

"Because I'm one of them too. And I am _not_ your child," Amy retorted.

"Fine. You can be their mother," the Doctor did not wait for any reaction to this statement before flourishing his hands once more and returning to the awaiting crowd and lifting the microphone back to his mouth. "Onwards! Oh, I like that. Good word. So, onwards! You lot have all been walking about on this planet, and I'll be willing to bet you all want to travel. No, I'm not offering you plane tickets, but I think you'll find my vehicle to be much more comfortable."

The Doctor began herding the whole lot of Time Lords out of the barracks-like room they were currently in and toward the main control room where the TARDIS awaited. Along the way, a young man walked near the Doctor and gave him a funny look. He was wearing a baseball cap and a simple gold chain along with an expression that bordered on arrogance.

"Hey, you, what makes you so special?" the young man asked in a clear American accent. It sounded like Philadelphian to the Doctor, but he could be wrong about that.

"Me? Special? Well, I must admit that I've secretly started up knitting in my spare time," the Doctor said conversationally. The boy rolled his eyes in an exaggerated fashion.

"Nah, man, I mean how do you know what's going on? I've asked some of these cops or whatever they are what's going on, but they didn't even know themselves." The Doctor took a long look at the boy before answering.

"What's your name?" the Doctor asked instead. The boy didn't let any surprise at the change in topic show.

"Andy Emerson."

"And how old are you?" the Doctor pressed.

"Eighteen. What's that gotta do with anything?"

"Take a good look at me. I'm 907. When you get to be my age, you'll understand everything a lot better than you do right now," the ancient Time Lord said seriously. Andy squinted a bit like he was trying to see if the Doctor was lying. Apparently satisfied, the young man sighed and shrugged, wandering back into the group. By then, the large group had reached the blue police box.

"Right then. All of you, I know what you're thinking- this is a police box; is he a madman? To the first part of that, yes, it is a police box, but that's not all it is. And to the second part, yes, I am a madman," the Doctor gestured broadly to his prized time machine and with a snap opened the doors. A brave soul poked his head in through the wooden doors and gasped with amazement. He quickly stepped inside and was followed by the other 97 of his race, Jack, Rory, Amy, and the Doctor bringing up the rear.

Once inside, the scene much resembled kids in a candy shop. Many of the Time Lords were wandering aimlessly, staring at the room inside with mouths wide open. Others were leaping up and down the stairs like children, filled with excitement. Still others, ones that reminded the Doctor of himself, were admiring the console, tentatively poking a few buttons and levers and trying to assess what each one's function was.

"Alright, alright, now I know this is exciting, but if you would please back away from the console. We don't want anyone-" the Doctor was cut off by a loud dinging noise followed by a burst of confetti. The few closest to the console jumped back a bit in surprise, but ended up giggling nervously when they realized it was only confetti. After this, every one of the 99 Time Lords but the Doctor fell silent. "Good. Now, if you would all follow Rory, I have told the old girl to get a room ready for you. More like a camp if you ask me. 102 people on my TARDIS. I never thought I'd see the day!" 98 Time Lord heads turned to Rory who balked completely.

"Rory. Show them," the Doctor whispered. Rory stared at him uncomprehendingly.

"What? I don't know where that is!" Rory hissed.

"Just walk. The TARDIS'll show you," the Doctor whispered again. Rory cleared his throat and waded his way through the crowd, leading them toward one of the halls that led back to most of the rooms.

"This way! Follow me!" Rory commanded. He herded them through the halls as best as he could. "No, no, not that way. I'm pretty sure that's the swimming pool," he corrected one girl going in the wrong direction. After a couple minutes, the Doctor was alone in his console room with just Jack and Amy. There was an uncomfortable silence for a little while as Jack looked between the other two who were looking at each other.

"Alright, great. I think I'd best check up on Rory. He's not used to being in charge yet. Gotta make sure they don't run him over," Jack stated with a nod of his head before leaving hastily. Now still left in silence, the Doctor and Amy looked at each other without a word until Amy couldn't take it any longer and ran to him, hugging him tightly. The Doctor burrowed his head in her wonderful red hair, relishing in the feel of it.

"You have a family again," Amy murmured into somewhere close to the Doctor's ear. Amy could feel his smile against her neck.

"Yeah, I do. Off we go with our family, about to found our own planet together." Amy laughed and let the Doctor go but didn't back too far away. She had never been the type of person to pay attention to personal space boundaries.

"You make it sound so romantic," Amy teased. The Doctor didn't allow himself to get embarrassed; he laughed softly and grinned, thinking just how right she was.

"Go to bed, Pond. We've got a big day ahead of us." For once, Amy didn't argue. She knew he was right, so she gave the older Time Lord one last quick hug before retiring to her room on the TARDIS.

Left alone, the Doctor leaned up against his console, thinking over each and every face he'd seen in that room at Torchwood and in his console room. It amazed him that each one had two hearts and a brain that could fathom the existence and workings of time. And there was that ever-so-comforting feeling of 99 other consciousnesses brushing up against his own. That was a feeling he hadn't felt in many years- not since the fall of Gallifrey. Perhaps he should start calling it Old Gallifrey, the Doctor realized with a crooked smile.

Now, of course, the Doctor could never have a peaceful moment without getting interrupted by some sort of drama. Drama in this case came in the form of a woman. Hell, in high heels.

"Hello sweetie," came the voice of none other than River Song. The Doctor jumped, spinning around to lay his eyes on the woman who made less sense to him than any form of metaphysical philosophy or physics.

"Who are you?" the Doctor asked. He was tired of all of this confusion, and there wasn't any way he was allowing her to dance around the issue this time. No, definitely not. He stalked around his console toward her, but she slowly edged in the opposite direction. A game of cat and mouse, that's what the Doctor was reminded of, except this time he was the cat and the mouse was information.

"Haven't we been through this?" River replied with a smile, but the Doctor could tell she was worried ever so slightly. Call it a Time Lord's intuition, but he knew. So he pursued his goal, quickening his pace slightly, but River matched him in speed.

"No, who are you know? You can't exist! Amy and Rory can't… have you." The Doctor tried to keep his voice level though he felt heat rising to his cheeks. His slow walk had become heavy footfalls, not even any longer aimed at River.

"You always did blush." River was smirking, but the smirk faded as she took a breath to continue on. "I don't exist, my love, not really. Think about it- records of you remain. Don't you remember the Library?" The Doctor though for a moment he'd stopped breathing. The Library was the day he'd first met River, the day the Vashta Nerada had attacked, the day she had handcuffed him. And, it was not the Doctor who saved the day, but River.

"You've been to the Library? But that means… that's the day you…"

"Died, yes. And what did you do, you clever old man?" River prodded him in the right direction. The Doctor swallowed and licked his lips, realizations beginning to come to him. He stopped moving altogether, frozen to the spot as he replayed that day in his mind as if on fast forward. Scene by scene, he remembered finding how to save the Library's inhabitants, River sacrificing herself, and then finding her special sonic screwdriver.

"I saved you, on the computer. So you're-"

"A program. Conscious data preserved in a processing system," River had a small smile on again, but it wasn't a happy one. The Doctor couldn't place exactly what that facial expression was saying, but before he could find an answer, another question popped into that brain of his.

"But then how do you know my future? How did you know me in my future of the past reality now that this has happened?" The Doctor wanted to pull his hair out. The more he learned about this woman, the less sense she made. She knew so much about future him before the mass metacrisis, but then she also knew about him in the present reality. She'd warned him about Apalapucia, the place where he'd kissed Amy. River's mum. Okay, a little awkward.

"You changed everything. That severed hand of yours was never supposed to be in the TARDIS. It was supposed to create a metacrisis, yes, but long before that day with the Pandorica. In that reality, I knew you in your future. In this one, I don't, but I'm only data. My memory was altered in the Big Bang 2, corrupted even. I'm an anomaly. I see both realities as one because my processor is not capable of differentiating the two very well; it's rather confusing. And the two realities are at war, tearing each other apart. Soon I'll split into many programs as the firewalls separate conflicting corrupted files." River's smile was sad, so, so, sad. The Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders, only to realize he couldn't even get a hold of her. He spun around in a complete 360, desperate to save her.

"Quarantine of corrupted data. That means your consciousness will be disintegrated!" The Doctor was frantic now, trying to find a way to save her, again, to restore her data. But he could no longer even make physical contact with her. She was fading.

"And I'll be happy. I'll forget that I'm just a program, forget my past, and I'll live on in the netscape," River spoke softly as if to a crying child. But the Doctor didn't care- he felt like a crying child without so many tears.

"I had to get to you first, before I lost myself, so I hacked the TARDIS computer while I still had processing power and set up home. When I disintegrate, I'll be sent back to the Library by the retrieval program," River's voice shook, but only just. "One last thing- don't get angry."

"What? When?"

"You'll know." And with that last prophetic statement, River closed her eyes, accepting the ripping she felt through every one of her falsified cells.

With barely a noise, River Song evaporated into the invisible wireless network, being torn apart into millions of electrons and fragmented files. A haze of smoke was the only reminder of what had happened, that and the Doctor's shattered hearts. He'd failed again, failed to save a friend standing right in front of him. Overcome by a wave of grief and self-loathing, the Doctor dropped to the floor of his console room, tears wetting his useless hands. He refused to call out for Jack or Rory or even Amy.

"I can't save them forever. Only for a little while," the Doctor whispered to himself. Though he was on a ship with 99 other Time Lords, finally with many of his own kind for the first time in years, he had never felt so alone sitting on the floor and crying to disintegrated data.

**A/N: Finally, River is explained! Next chapter should explain more about New Gallifrey, introduce some of the new Time Lords, and possibly show just how much River really knew about the future. **


	17. Talking to Rocks

**A/N: So, my computer was broken, but I replaced the battery and it's working again. Sorry for the delay! This chapter's got a lot of dialogue, but hopefully that's not too big a deal. Enjoy!**

The proverbial sun was shining, the TARDIS was blue, and someone was singing, though it sounded nothing like birds. Morning with 102 people could be, well, a little stressful. The Doctor had strongly considered scouring the recesses of his beloved ship to find some soundproof earmuffs he'd bought one day when planning a visit to Earth around the time of 1980's music, but he realized that this would not be practical. Instead, he settled on shouting his voice hoarse, trying to give the simple instruction for everyone to exit the TARDIS one by one and onto New Gallifrey.

"Yes, the doors! One at a time!" he shouted over the din of all the Time Lords crammed into one room. After most of the time-traveling race had exited onto their new home planet, Amy elbowed her way into the crowd, aiming to leave the blue space ship as well, but the Doctor grabbed her arm.

"Nope, back in the TARDIS with you," he said, bringing his voice down in volume. Amy gave him an inquisitive look.

"What? Why? We only just got here!" Amy's voice earned the attention of Rory who had also just been about to depart. He looked over a few heads at his ginger friend, trying to catch a gist of what was going on.

"Exactly. And think about it- we've got a time machine. We can 'just get here' all over again." The Doctor answered too quietly for Rory to hear, so the man joined Amy and the Doctor near the left side of the doors.

"That doesn't answer why," Amy grumbled.

"What's the matter?" Rory asked. The Doctor glanced at him but addressed Amy instead.

"Always the stubborn one, aren't you? Let's say we've got some home improvements to do and we need to pay a visit to the hardware store." The Doctor's comment made no sense to the curious Rory.

"Everything okay?" Rory's question was quite obviously aimed at Amy.

"Yup, fine. Go on, we'll be out soon," Amy replied. Rory obliged and followed the group in the exodus of the time machine, leaving just Amy and the Doctor inside. "Right, so now you're going to explain why right when we've just reunited with our people we're leaving them alone on the new planet." It was not a question or a request; it was a command.

" Think about it- eventually all those Time Lords are going to have devices of time travel like we do. We're time traveling beings, so there's no guarantee that we'll ever be in the same place at the same time. So I want to put time in a sort of stasis here on New Gallifrey, meaning time will be purely linear. That means there would be no going back or forward in time in relation to this planet. It'll be a bugger to get approved- causes temporal traffic jams once you get near the gravitational orbit- but I think we can make it work." Amy leaned against the railing the lined the steps up to the console as she took in what her companion was saying. There was a lot to take in, so she decided to start with just one topic he'd touched on.

"Temporal traffic jams?" she repeated skeptically.

"Yeah. Because the time is strictly linear, whenever someone comes too close, they snap onto out time stream. Think about it like a strong magnet."

"That… actually makes sense. How do you do it then?"

"We need to visit the Shadow Proclamation for approval, but first we should pay a visit to the creators of time stasis. They're called the Tuli, and they refuse to divulge the true name of their planet, so over time it's been given the name Planet T," the Doctor explained as his hands worked the controls, setting the coordinates for their new destination.

Without another word, the Doctor casually opened the blue doors and gestured for Amy to take a look at this new world called Planet T by some. The terrain was rocky and bland, mostly gray and brown in coloration and without any sort of adornment that the female Time Lord might have expected from a race that invented such a complex idea. But upon closer inspection, Amy realized that not all of the rocky earth was as dull as it seemed, for some of what appeared to be rocks had eyes.

Before she could bring herself to look into those eyes, she first took note of their strange bodies. These creatures must be the Tuli that the Doctor had mentioned, the creators of the time stasis, but Amy never would have guessed that upon seeing them. Their skin appeared to be made of rock and they have six limbs, much like insects. The Tuli moved slowly, as if each motion took an extraordinary amount of decision-making and thought. Each creature had a different amount of cracks on their rock-like exterior- some appeared smoother like pebble on a riverbed, yet others had so many cracks that it seemed they might fall apart.

And then there was their eyes. At first glance, Amy would have compared the Tuli's eyes to a Time Lord's eyes- timeless and ancient. But the longer she looked into the fathomless dark blue eyes, the more she was reminded of some sort of god-like owl, always watching each event since the beginning of time. It sent shivers straight to her spine.

"Be polite. The Tuli are a greatly revered species across many galaxies," the Doctor whispered to his redheaded friend. Amy nodded slowly, still captivated by those deep-set eyes. The Doctor stepped forward to one of the Tuli, a particularly cracked one.

"Hello, Tuli. I come asking for your assistance," the Doctor greeted, bowing his head slightly. The Tuli gave the Doctor a slow blink before opening its great mouth like a furnace.

"Doctor… we know… why… you come. You… wish to… create… a time stasis… on… your new planet," the Tuli replied, each word coming out like a profound statement in itself, taking great lengths of time to form each syllable. The voice it spoke in was deep and gravelly.

"You lot always do seem to know what's going on. Well, since you already know what I want, let's cut to the chase, shall we? Will you grant New Gallifrey a time stasis?" the Doctor asked. Amy thought he was being a little forthright, but she stayed quiet, knowing she wouldn't do the situation any good.

"A Time Lord… wishes… to stop… time?" the Tuli's voice lilted in the sense of a question, laborious in formation.

"No, not stop time. Just make it linear around our planet. We will still travel time outside of New Gallifrey." The Tuli paused for even longer than usual, its eyes swirling with unknown thoughts.

"Doctor… who are you… to… bend time… to… your will?" the Tuli's voice did not have any emotion, but it sounded deeper and more grave. The Doctor's face, likewise, darkened and became more focused.

"It's in my- our- blood, to travel time."

"No… arrogance… is in your… blood… that you… believe yourselves… to be… Lords of Time," the Tuli retorted. There was a flash of emotion in the Doctor's eyes, something that Amy did not recognize. It was similar to anger, but deeper, older. And it didn't bode well. The ginger stepped forward, never one to be timid.

"Well, we are called Time Lords for a reason," Amy said casually. Those deep and dark eyes turned to penetrate her own for the first time since their arrival on Planet T. And, for a moment, Amy regretted speaking at all. But then she regained her confidence, reassuring herself that she had just as much of a right to talk to these aliens as the Doctor.

"Amelia… Pond. You have… no, wait… you will… become one with… time. Then… then you can… argue with… us." A chill radiated through Amy's body. Those same words said by perhaps any other being in the universe would have sounded like an empty and pointless threat, but from this Tuli, it did not sound like a threat. It sounded like a prophecy.

The Doctor made eye contact with Amy without words. He had no words of comfort for her, nothing to make her feel better. The Tuli were known to catch glimpses of time outside their established linear timeline across space, so some species around the universe had labeled the race as prophetic. Instead, the old Time Lord turned to the Tuli to resume their battle of their wits over a topic both felt passionately about- time.

"Time isn't naturally linear. It's a great big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff," the Doctor countered the rock-like creature before them. The Tuli made a noise like a great sigh followed by a deep breath as if preparing for a long explanation.

"No… a ball… of yarn… all one piece… originally. The time votex… the untempered schism… that you… claim… allowed… your biology… to time travel… do you know… what it is? Do you know… how… it was… created? It is the… scrap yard of time… created by… your kind… from all the… time… you've bent and ripped… apart," the Tuli spoke in, if possible, an even more grave voice. For emphasis, it even moved one of its great stone limbs in an arc to symbolize throwing away scraps of time. A few nearby Tuli clearly began listening closer, interested to hear what this one cracked being had to say.

"But the untempered schism created us, not the other way around," the Doctor said, his brow furrowing in confusion.

"I thought that was what you built up resistance to," Amy added in. The Doctor nodded distractedly.

"You… of all people… should know… about time paradoxes." And two massive brains clicked simultaneously. Both Time Lords thought similar trains of thought about how the result can also sometimes be the consequence when it comes to time travel. For instance, Amy thought about how a person could receive a note telling them to visit a store where they buy parchment and write the very note they received telling themselves to visit the store by traveling back in time to leave it for their earlier selves. The Doctor on the other hand, thought of how River was the consequence and instigator of so many things.

"So, Tuli, will you allow our kind to have a time stasis on our planet of New Gallifrey?" the Doctor asked, his voice short and clipped. His hands were clenching and unclenching into loose fists.

"No… I will not… grant your request… until you… prove… a shred of humility… You must live out… a full moon's… cycle… without your… temporal toys… and with… reminders… of the darker side… of time. People… thrown from… their addiction… to time," the Tuli rumbled. The Doctor told a firm hold of Amy's arm at that point, his anger growing. The old man began marching his companion straight back to the TARDIS, ignoring the plentiful stares of the rock insects, all-knowing eyes boring into their moving forms.

"Doctor? What just happened?" Amy asked quietly. The Doctor's jaw was clenched firm, his gaze focused on his blue ship.

"The Tuli always have always thought themselves to be so superior to everyone who travels time, especially Time Lords. They believe in the 'sanctity of time' and all that sort of rubbish."

"And that last bit? About proving humility. Sounded like some sort of test, yeah?"

"I am not jumping through hoops for them," the Doctor scoffed. Amy kept her thought that the Doctor was only proving the Tuli right about his arrogance. Instead, she allowed herself to be directed back into the TARDIS where the Doctor slammed his controls. Amy stood a few steps away quietly, not wanting to upset him.

"Argh!" the Doctor grunted, hitting his hands against the console in aggravation.

"What is it?" Amy inquired.

"Even my own TARDIS isn't listening to me. I told her to go to the Shadow Proclamation, but she keeps on materializing on Earth in the 21st century." The older Time Lord banged a few more of the buttons and levers and such around, trying in vain to redirect his time machine.

The TARDIS landed calmly on Earth, quietly refusing to obey the Doctor. Amy decided to take a peek out of the blue doors to see where exactly they'd landed. It was her original time, after all. She was greeted with two familiar sets of eyes staring back at her.

"Um, Doctor? You might want to come see this one," Amy called over her shoulder. The Doctor strode toward the door, coming up even with Amy at the threshold.

"Well. Hello, again," the Doctor greeted the two men.

"Care to explain?" Jack asked, his arms crossed. Rory stood next to him, looking equally as put out. The Doctor looked from one to the other.

"Oh, yes, uh…" the Doctor stumbled over his words. Amy took the chance to jump in.

"He doesn't know," she jumped in, sounding a little bit too happy about the situation. Mostly she was excited that the Doctor didn't know what was happening for once. Rory shook his head and Jack smirked.

"No, no, I… ah. Oh, that's not good. That's extremely not good," the Doctor mumbled to himself.

"What's not good? That you don't know what's going on?" Rory asked. The Doctor shook his head and pointed behind him to an empty wall.

"My TARDIS seems to have taken a vacation." Three sets of eyes locked on him looking none too amused.

"And we are where exactly?" Amy asked, trying to remain calm. A quick examination of their surroundings revealed that they were in a fairly average one family house in the 21st century with sofas, picture frames, and even a fire place.

"Looks normal to me," the Doctor said with a shrug.

"Well, that's where normal ends," another voice jumped in. A woman had just entered the room, and she did not look at all happy to see the other four already present. The Doctor swallowed, realizing that his life could become very complicated very fast.

**A/N: The name for the Tuli came from the Swahili word for static. Just a point of interest. And the upcoming chapter features the return of a few familiar faces. **


	18. Psychic Instant Messaging

**A/N: This has a lot going on, two major things, so I hope you enjoy. Oh, and the whole time I was writing this chapter, I kept thinking of these lyrics. This chapter isn't a songfic or anything, the lyrics just fit with one of the concepts.**

_All because of you,  
>I haven't slept in so long,<br>When I do I dream of drowning in the ocean,  
>Longing for the shore where I can lay my head down,<br>I'll follow your voice,  
>All you have to do is shout it out.<em>

"Would you like to tell me what's going on? Because, and it's funny, I didn't remember letting four people into my house," the ginger woman in front of the time travelers said with pursed lips.

"Er, hello Donna," the Doctor greeted awkwardly. Donna raised her eyebrows at the Time Lord but quickly switched her gaze to Jack.

"You're Jack, and you were one of the Doctor's mates. What in the world is going on?" Donna demanded information. The Doctor's own eyebrows shot toward his hairline. Donna remembered him? How was that possible? She didn't recognize him now, of course, since he had changed faces since then, but the last time he's seen her, he'd wiped her mind.

Jack opened and closed his mouth a few times like a fish out of water. "Uh, well, you know. Stag night?" he finished lamely. Donna gave one shake of her head.

"No, I don't think so, because I could have sworn I heard that crazy spaceman's blue box. So tell me where he is." Amy looked at this woman, apprising her and sending a glance to Rory. This was one tough woman, just the kind the Doctor seemed to acquire.

"Donna? It's me," the Doctor said quietly. Donna's eyes locked on him like a predator, going over his appearance. She sighed, her anger still evident.

"You? You got a _bowtie_?" Donna said with incredulity. Amy sniggered and the Doctor looked hurt.

"What? Bowties are cool! You people have no sense of fashion." Rory, who had remained untouched in the conversation, decided it was time for him to assess what had happened. He took a step forward, subtly setting himself as a barrier between Donna and the others. She seemed to be a volatile person, and Rory was not the type of man who favored confrontation.

"So, I guess we all have a lot to talk about, then," Amy inserted a little bit awkwardly. Donna sent her a quick glare.

"You think you're special don't you, sweetheart?" Donna directed her statement to Amy. Without waiting for response, she continued. "He does this to women all the time. He takes them away on his space ship and shows them all sorts of places throughout time and introduces them to a bunch of aliens, but you know what? He leaves us all behind in the end. I'm not the first or the last; I learned that the hard way. He'll leave you back on Earth without another _word_, all because you're just too 'human.' What a load of crap." Each statement made the Doctor flinch, if not physically, then psychically. Amy crossed her arms.

"Actually, I do think I'm special. Cuz you know what? I'm not some ordinary human girl," Amy fired back. Donna mirrored Amy's posture, crossing her arms as well.

"Really now?"

"Yeah. I'm a-"

"Well, I think that's quite enough, ladies," the Doctor interjected. Amy sent the Doctor a look of confusion, perhaps a little frustration, but he shook his head slightly at her, telling her delicately not to give away her identity.

A silence stretched out for the next minute as no one was willing to make the next move. The tension in the air was palpable coupled with the looks Donna was giving Jack, Amy, and the Doctor. Rory was exempted from this fuming rage, most likely due to the fact that he hadn't really said much to upset any of the parties in the room. As if things were not complex enough, a set of footsteps came bounding down the stairs so quickly it was as if the person whose body belonged to said feet was more so falling than walking. Enter a blonde twenty-something. Amy rolled her eyes in her mind; this pretty girl was probably, considering the circumstances, another one of the Doctor's numerous previous female companions.

"Doctor? Is it really you?" Rose asked. The Doctor nodded and swallowed nervously. Rose approached him, her mouth hanging open ever so slightly, her face keeping a calm expression. Then, when she was about a foot and a half away from him, she promptly slapped him as hard as she could.

"Ow!" the Doctor exclaimed, his hand flying to caress his smarting cheek. Rose retreated, standing close to Donna and joining the growing trend of folding her arms in front of her chest.

_This is really not my day._ The Doctor spoke in his mind, but apparently his consciousness was being extra noisy because Amy shrugged at him and gave him an unpitying look.

"Rose! So nice to see you again," Jack greeted cheerily. He seemed suddenly immune to the chaos going around the room in the form of two very angry women as soon as Rose entered the room. Rose turned to Jack and gave him a reluctant smile.

"Hey, Jack. I'm surprised you remember me," Rose replied. Jack smiled at her devilishly.

"How could I forget the London Blitz on the clock tower?" Jack responded conversationally. But then he cocked his head to one side. "Hey, how do I remember that? Up until now, the only information I knew about the Doctor came from the Torchwood database and the times in the past six months I'd met him."

"Don't be surprised. He wiped my mind when he left me on Earth," Donna muttered angrily.

"No, I didn't. I would _never_," the Doctor defended himself. Donna threw her hands in the air.

"Then why couldn't I remember you or anything we'd done? Same with Rose. Funny thing is, we had been lodging together, working at the same business and all that jazz, when one day we both suddenly remembered you about a week ago. Sounds like the same thing's happened to Jack. It it's really seeming to fit that you erased our memories of you," Donna accused. The Doctor held his head in both hands.

"Okay, yes, this is all my fault, but not the way you think. Will you at least give me a chance to explain what's happened?" the Doctor pleaded. Donna and Rose exchanged a look and unenthusiastically nodded.

The Doctor motioned for everyone to sit down on the couches and chairs in the living room they were in. "Where to start?" the Doctor asked rhetorically. Amy took his hand and squeezed it gently.

"Start with what you told me about the Pandorica," Amy suggested softly. Rose's eyes fastened on that little gesture. The Doctor thought about withdrawing his hand from Amy's but stopped. There was no reason to. With a deep breath, he started his story.

He told the group about the universe falling apart, falling out of time, and how the Pandorica could restore everything if he flew it into the exploding TARDIS. He mentioned in passing that he had known Amy and Rory during that adventure, but he left River out of the story. Then he told them how he'd woken up on Earth where no one could sense him in any way followed by how he'd evoked memories by leaving signs on Rory's table. The Doctor included the crucial bit here about how he'd picked up readings of Time Lord DNA. He told how no one had any memories of him except Amy who had one memory of him from when she was a little girl.

The story got more interesting as the Doctor described how he'd taken Rory and Amy onto his TARDIS and Amy had regenerated, then their visit to Torchwood where they'd picked up Jack. He then moved on to how the foursome visited other worlds as well as investigated for more Time Lords back on Earth. He then skipped a lot of what had happened next because it was mostly personal and not important to the backstory, but he included Amy and his most recent jaunt in the TARDIS where they'd confronted the Tuli and received a sort of bargain.

"So just to summarize, yes, I accidentally made more Time Lords and somehow in the process erased all memory of myself because I intended to erase all of me. And, more importantly for now, I've angered some touchy living rocks who think it's a great idea to put me through misery by sticking me with you lot for a month."

The Doctor's tale was received fairly well, considering. But, of course, everyone had some injections to make, some corrections, and some complaints. Amy had added in some extra details, Jack had cracked some jokes, and Donna had thrown in some of her characteristic sarcasm. Rory had been the quietest, but he had filled in some of the missing details about the hunt for the hundred Time Lords.

"Alright, fine, so it might not be totally your fault then. But why did these Tuli things decide to stick us all in a house together, _my_ house I might add?" Rose asked, sounding a little exasperated.

"Well, they did say that they wanted to teach the Doctor humility. Something about, um, people addicted to time?" Amy attempted to answer.

"This is just… way too much for me. Look, it's practically two in the morning and I'm awake and not getting laid. Do you know how cranky that can make me?" Jack sighed, his mood switching once again. Donna stood up from the chair she'd been sitting on next to the empty fireplace.

"Fine, we should all sleep. There's a spare room upstairs and two couches down here. I'll let you guys fight that one out," Donna said curtly, turning heel and walking up the stairs. As soon as she'd reached the top of the steps, Jack bounded up after her, eager to claim the bedroom. Rory followed him up, quite used to sleeping in close quarters with the ex-time agent after so many trips around the world searching for Time Lords. That left Rose sitting in the room with the Doctor and Amy. The blonde woman quickly stood up.

"Well I'll be going to bed too," Rose spoke abruptly. She made for the stairs in the same manner of the three before here, but the Doctor rose and grabbed her arm gently. She whirled her head around, hair flying and almost hitting the Time Lord in his face. The young woman searched the Doctor's face, looking for something, anything reminiscent of the man she'd known.

"I'm sorry, Rose Tyler." It was too much for her to handle, so Rose left the room in favor of her bedroom, not saying a word in response to the centuries-old man's apology. The Doctor, mentally exhausted, returned to sit on a couch next to Amy.

For a few minutes, neither one said anything. There was too much to say, too many questions to ask and be answered, and their brains were tired. Yes, even Time Lord brains could get tired. The pair simply sat, side by side, their bodies brushing lightly against one another to let each other know they were still there. After a few minutes had passed, Amy sighed and leaned her head to rest it on the Doctor's shoulder. He adjusted accordingly, moving his shoulder to a position he knew was more comfortable for leaning against, and allowing his own head to touch the top of hers.

"Doctor, why can they remember you but I can't when I'm the one who…" Amy trailed off, not knowing how to describe herself in relation to him. The one who's still with you? The one who's a Time Lord? The one who loves you?

The Doctor reached his hand over to stroke Amy's hair in a comforting way. "Amy, Amy, Amy, I don't know how, and I don't know why, but I promise you it doesn't matter." For emphasis, he kissed the side of her head, but Amy drew back a fraction so he could see her wild eyes.

"Doesn't matter? I can't even remember why you took me with you, how we got on, what sort of things we did together, any of that!" The Doctor turned his body to face her but stayed quiet for a moment. He was fighting an internal battle over what he was about to do, about whether it was really a good idea. She had a right to know the answers to those questions that she'd asked, and yes, he really did have those answers, but he wasn't sure if she'd like them. Would she like what she saw? And, on a more selfish note, would it change her thoughts on Rory?

With a slow exhale, the Doctor tenderly put one hand on each side of Amy's ginger head. Amy watched him carefully, not knowing what he was doing. The Doctor closed his eyes and leaned forward, pressing his forehead to hers.

"I can show you why I took you and how we got on and all that," he murmured. With those words, he eased Amy's powerful mind into a Gallifreyan mind meld.

***DW*DW*DW***

Amy felt her mind being pulled closer to the Doctor's like an insistent yet gentle leading hand. She didn't know what was happening, but she trusted this man completely, so she allowed herself to be immersed in the Doctor's mind like a dive into the ocean. Amy made an involuntary action almost like opening her eyes, but she didn't feel her eyelids move physically. Instead, it was as if she'd opened her eyes psychically and was glimpsing a movie of the Doctor's memories.

It was like dreaming.

In front of Amy's inner eyes, the Doctor was being cracked on the head with a cricket bat. Before she could really register who'd hit him with such a blow, the Doctor's memory cut out and started up again like a blip on a video. The scene returned with him waking up, groggy and handcuffed to the radiator, sitting on the floor. Amy gasped. She was watching a version of herself confront the Doctor. This Amy looked a little younger, perhaps in her late teens, and was wearing a policewoman uniform. There was no audio on this memory until the Doctor's voice suddenly cut in.

"I heard you on the radio. You called for backup."

Then Amy heard her younger self reply, "I was pretending. It's a pretend radio."

"But you're a policewoman," the Doctor replied, confused. Then, exasperated, the younger Amy pulled her hat off her head and tossed it to the ground, letting her red hair cascade down.

"I'm a kissogram!" At this point, a disembodied voice laughed somewhere in the back of her mind. Or, rather, the Doctor's mind, since she was sharing at the moment. The laugh was then followed by a psychically-communicated thought.

_**So you see, you made quite the first impression**__._ It was the Doctor's thoughts, permeating into her own. The laugh was his as well, the current him, the one whose head she was in. It made sense, after all, the he was able to add commentary on a tale told in his own head. The next sequence went by quickly as if the Doctor had set it to fast forward until it flipped back to normal speed as Amy and the Doctor met Rory in a field.

"Oh, this is Rory. He's a… friend," the Amy in a police outfit said. Rory laughed and shook his head around a little.

"Boyfriend," he corrected her. Amy looked awkwardly at the Doctor.

"Kind-of-boyfriend," the young Amy corrected him in return.

Well, that was a shocker, that one. She'd dated Rory in the past reality? Amy waited for the Doctor to insert a comment on this little tidbit, but Amy's personal psychic tour guide seemed to be silent for the time being. Instead the scenes flew by on fast forward again, slowing down to show Amy running out of her house in her nightie. She approached the Doctor and was having a conversation, once again lacking audio for a time until it cut back in.

"Yeah but those things. Those amazing things- all that stuff... That was _two years ago_!" Amy said, her voice quite angry.

_**Yeah… I really did a bad job on timing**__._ The Doctor communicated with her again via psychic ping. Amy mentally rolled her eyes and responded with her own psychic message. _**Yeah? Well not everything's changed then.**_

The Doctor did not dignify that with a response, instead choosing to return to the memories, going at a very fast rate now. The memories were squashed together into a montage of clips, focusing often on seemingly insignificant things like moments where the pair would hug or laugh together instead of the big save-the-world times. And sometimes there would be short memory clips of little glances the pair would exchange, clearly meaningful. Then Amy watched a terrifying summary of herself in a forest full of creatures called the Weeping Angels where she was forced to keep her eyes shut. Then the memories decelerated to normal speed.

_**You really threw me for a loop here. Twice.**_

Amy watched herself show the Doctor an engagement ring. The Doctor asked who the lucky fella was, and Amy watched herself respond, "You met him."

"Oh, the good-looking one? Or the other one?" the Doctor asked, making a beak motion over his nose to symbolize Rory's rather large nose. Amy hit him on the arm.

"The other one." Amy was amazed at what this other her was saying.

**_Rory and I got _engaged?**

_**Wait. That's not the only shocker you give me here.**_ The Doctor sounded a little amused, so Amy watched and waited for the audio to cut back in. But she didn't have to wait for the audio to understand that the other Amy had just tried to climb on top of the Doctor and kiss him. Amy watched in fascination, and a twinge of embarrassment, as she attempted to kiss the Doctor. He jumped away from her, but she pursed him, pinning the man to the TARDIS and kissing him there.

Amy watched, of course, to see any signs of the Doctor kissing her back. She couldn't help it. It appeared to her that he must have been kissing her back at least partially because the kiss lasted for a few seconds and his mouth was moving along with hers. She smirked at herself, silently remembering the last time she'd shared a kiss with the Doctor and reminding herself that she would really like to continue that practice.

The memories flashed forward for a small time until she watched the Doctor burst out of a stripper cake at Rory's stag night. It was almost a bit painful to watch as he told Rory, and the rest of his mates, how his fiancé had tried to kiss him. Rory looked horrified and not consoled in the least when the Doctor tried to make him feel better by mentioning that he was indeed a lucky man because she was a great kisser. Amy began laughing at this scene and the Doctor's awkwardness.

More memories flashed by and Amy noticed subtle differences in the Doctor's relationship with her. The two would sometimes try to be more reserved around each other and Rory would sometimes seem like a third wheel at other times. Worst of all would be moments when the Doctor would start to smile and look like he was about to say something, but then he would look over at Rory and think better of it. Finally, Amy received a summary of what had happened with the Pandorica. The memories faded out and Amy found herself being separated from the Doctor's mind. She wanted to hold on, wanted that closeness provided by the mind meld, but she allowed herself to be brought back to her own mind and to reality on the sofa.

"Wow. There's so much… there," Amy murmured, finding that she was falling into the couch which suddenly seemed so comfortable. The Doctor stood up, picking up a folded blanket from an armchair next to the fireplace and draping it over Amy's body.

"Shh. We'll talk in the morning," the Doctor whispered. That was the last thing Amy heard or thought about before she fell asleep.

**A/N: Hope you liked it! I didn't intend for this chapter to get so much longer than the others, but there was a lot to cover. **


End file.
